


Another Beginning

by HelplessBystander



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Gen, Military, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2020-10-09 20:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20516294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelplessBystander/pseuds/HelplessBystander
Summary: The Horde marches forth: a preposterous crisis with resolutions remarkable and losses lamentable. May contain trace amounts of paperwork, tea parties, a Man with a Plan, and the destiny of the Chosen One. Batteries not included.





	1. Chapter 1: A New Beginning (Ping)

**Longer Summary: **This is a fanfiction that tries to explore a few things not entirely explored in the show. Who cleans up the garbage in the Fright Zone? Where do the Horde get their food? And what happens after the Horde conquers a new kingdom? 'Annother Beginning' is an attempt at envisioning a slightly different Horde, in a slightly different world of Etheria and the conflict between good and evil with a slightly more militaristic lens. May include brief moments of Mary-Sue-itis, since it was originally meant for an audience of one (me). I plan to update the story daily, and flesh out the concepts I want to explore as much as possible, though that may not be an entirely realistic goal, I will try to see if it is at all achievable.

'Another Beginning' will be my first serious attempt at writing fanfiction for a show that I'm really passionate about, so I hope that I will be able to improve my writing through this and be able to present to you a fan's look at an AU where things are _juuust _a little bit more different, with 5% more existential angst. I respect the original show and don't wish to disrespect canon, so on that note, please don't take (too much) offense at my generic ship and OCs. We can hold different opinions on the ships, and I hope this will be as fun for you all to read as it is for me to write it! :) -Helpless Bystander

**Where I want to take this story: **Delve into Adora's mental journey away from the Horde a bit more and explore what her life was like as a Horde cadet before becoming She-Ra and recontextualise certain aspects of the story with the addition of my own OCs. Kind of focus on what the little guys are doing while the Horde wages an all-out attempt to bring the planet under their rule.

Though I have the long-term goal of covering some events from Season 2 and Season 3 in this fanfic, I'll focus on the developing a timeline that can reach the events of season 1 first, and try to keep this self-indulgent adventure into the world of '_She-Ra and the Princesses of Power_' alive for as long as possible. Flesh out Ping (an OC and self-insert) as a character. Give satisfactory character arcs to all introduced characters.

**What this story is NOT about, and will not feature elements of: **Heavy cursing and profanities, gratuitous violence (not really into waxing poetics about fight scenes and don't have much interest in writing excessive imaginary gore), glorification of dictatorships and morally untenable positions (though this story will take place primarily through the perspective of a Horde soldier and will try and flesh out details about the Horde, but hopefully this won't come off as pro-authoritarian stratocracies), disrespecting canon (though the story divulge from the source material, it is not done maliciously or with spite), weird out-of-character actions for Canon Casts (Adora won't suddenly become a villainous cold-blooded killer or Hordak suddenly becoming emotionally-unstable).

This is also not a textbook, don't take what it says as 100% proven facts. Please take the story with a grain of salt, but also please don't go overboard with the criticism, thanks! :D

Sincerely,

Helpless Bystander

* * *

"_A story without beginning; A world without end._" It was the first thing Ping remembered as he woke up. A rough night, to be sure, but it wasn't—

**E͡҉á̢͟͝r̵̶͢҉͞t̷̢͞͡͏h͏̶̴̨͜.́͢ ͠**

His head pounded, as a sense of deep and immeasurable pain shock him, all rivalled by a sense of dissonance that even completing a coherent thought difficult. He knew that pain, it was familiar, yet he did not know from where, or even _when. _Where is he? Who is he? Why is there a strong echo within his mind that threatened to demolish all rational thought?

**̵̛̀W͢e̡̛̕ ̨͟͝A̴ll ͏H̷a̧v͏̛͜e̷̡͝ ͡Óư̕ŕ͢͟ ͜҉͟R͏̛ol̷̀͡é̴ ̨tò͘ ̴͢P͏l̸̶͞a͘͠y.͘ ͢**

**F̨̡or҉ t͜h̡e͜ ̡̧g͜͡ĺ̢or̵̶y̸ ͠o͏̢f̡̢͘ ̶H̕or͏̧d͟a͘k a̧̛n̸̷̨d̵ ͢t͏͠h̶e ͏̛͟ư͞ni̧̧͘t͏̴̡ý͡ ͟͝ǫ͢͝f̨ ̷͡Ȩ̷́t͘͠h̀é̕r͡i̛a**

He trembled, and tried to scream or even say anything. A word. Any word. Yet, he was unable to form any words out of his mouth. And that was when he realised he was much _much _smaller than he had expected himself to be.

"No. Nooooo!" He said, in a panic. He wasn't particularly

Ping tried to move, and found himself brushing against the soft weight of a blanket that bound his arms and legs from moving. "_Oh gosh, am I kidnapped? Wait, what does the word 'kidnap' mean again? What does 'what' mean?"_

No answer. Not that he was expecting one. There was the sound of footsteps now, as he pondered his existential crisis and as all meaning slipped from his grasp yet again.

Footsteps edged closer, finally, a blinding downpour of light cast down from above as he heard the sound of a latch open and the cream of hinges. "_Am I in a...box?" _Ping thought briefly, before he passed out.

Ping woke to the sound of voices arguing, they were voices that were trapped in a violent, violent debate. It wasn't quite what he would describe as a gentle or even mild conversation, but rather as a loud and emotionally-charged screaming match.

It wasn't long before he realised he could finally get up, now that he wasn't being wrapped around by layers upon layers of blankets like a cotton ball. He stretched, and the voices immediately stopped. Ping turned his head towards the source of the noise and saw two children at each other's throats barely half a metre away.

"Catra, what the hell are you doing!?" The voice to his left lowered, it came from a short child with long-ish dark blonde hair and sharp blue eyes as she paced around the room in frustration, "You woke him up!"

"Hey, it's not my fault! You started it!" The child he assumed was called catra then shot back in an emotionally charged voice. "Besides, it's not like he can talk...I don't think. Pretty sure he won't start complaining anytime soon."

He tried, to formulate words, yet none came out. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish as he tried to figure out exactly what the hell was wrong with him. Shakily, Ping tried to move his hands to eye level, only to find that they were the hands of a small child's, he was possibly not much older than the two kids currently engaged in a vicious argument. He...wasn't sure why, but as he examined his hands, he was hit with a strong sense of Jamais-vu.

"Well, Shadow Weaver said we just need to make sure he doesn't cry or wander off to some corner." The girl said, walking towards Ping with a stiff smile. She doesn't look confident or even appear to know what to do, not that Ping could help her much there even if he could talk. "Hey, uh, are you okay? You don't look very...um, look, I don't know how to do this. Where are you from?"

"Ah...Ah…" Ping tried to say, but without much luck. He tried to lift himself up and as close to eye level as possible to leverage his thousand-year stare towards the girl.

"Oh, he is moving." The girl looked at him with a look that somehow managed to contain surprise, fascination, mild discomfort, and a sense of awkwardness.

"Adora, for the last time, you have to stop reacting every tiny little thing. Ugh. Can we go back playing 'catch'?" She waved at Adora, and squinted at Ping with a slightly bored expression, "It's not like it's the first time we have to deal with new arrivals either, stop being so...ugggggh."

There was a knock on the door, Adora smiled as she rushed to open the door just as Catra's eyes widened as she tried to find a place to hide.

"Oh! Oh! Is Shadow Weaver back?" Adora smiled as opened the door, only to find two on-duty guards march in. Her face fell slightly, but perked up again as she asked, "Oh hey! Do you guys know where he's going to be assigned? What's his name? Where did he come from? Is—"

One of them sighed deeply, as though wallowing in a profound sense of discomfort that cannot be expressed through words. "Don't know. Don't care, but there's a note when he was found, probably in there. Now-occupied Rebel Stronghold. And, before you ask, yes."

"How did you know what I was going to ask?" Adora gasped, as she looked up at the two guards. As the two of them groaned.

"We've hearing you say that for the, oh let's see, last six times a new kid was brought in. If we still don't know what you're going to ask, either we aren't paying attention or we've been reassigned and you never noticed." As one of the guards explained. "Look, Lord Hordak has a plan, and we just follow orders on a need-to-know basis, as you will too once you graduate from school. So stop bothering us, let us take him to be examined for any medical illnesses and go bother some off-duty guards instead. Like, we don't know where he will be placed, it will depend on the aptitude test and frankly, _I don't think he's going to be placed with you guys. _He seems to be...a bit touched."

"How...H-h-h-h—" Ping tried to protest, somewhat miffed as he heard his intelligence being belittled into oblivion.

"I swear, I'm going to have to report it to my superiors if I get assigned anymore child duty. Why _we _always the ones assigned on childcare?" The more talkative guard grumbled, while he's more silent partner decided to wrapped a blanket around Ping and gently placed him over his shoulders. "Go pester Shadow Weaver about it, Adora. Gee, I'm sure she knows more than I do."

No sooner had that happened, a wave of tiredness overwhelmed hm yet again as he fell asleep on the shoulder of the guard.


	2. Chapter 2: Physical Examination (Ping)

**Author Talk:** Hey everyone, author here, thanks for checking out my fanfiction. I'm pretty new to this, but I'll see if I could do a daily update for the series and/or whether I could flesh out this idea primarily made for an audience of one (me). Thank you to the amazing team who brought us this series and I sincerely hope that people won't have an issue with this piece of fanfiction here, thank you. :)

The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned by Noelle Stevenson and DreamWorks Animation Television, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.

* * *

"Patient seems to have some form of mild dysesthesia pertaining to fine motor functions. Certain symptoms of dysarthria is observed, no successful attempts at coherent sentence construction thus far."

"Yeah, and maybe we would be getting some response if we _stopped drugging him to sleep, _Donny." A doctor (?) hissed as Ping watched her berate her partner.

"Hello? There'll be surprise inspections today, and unless you want to be reassigned to Field Medic duty outside of the Fright Zone I suggest that we hold off on poking and prodding the kid with surgery scalps at least until we make sure that he won't die while we're on-shift." A tall, imposing reptilian figure hissed back at the doctor. His greenish, mottled scales moved in reaction to the comment. Ping assumed he was called Donny. "And, in case you haven't realised, we have overflow at the moment, life in the Horde isn't exactly a walk through the park. If we find any anomalies, write it up, get a report, and put him down on the list sometime after. SO CAN YOU PUT AWAY THAT MARKING PEN ALREADY!?"

"Ugh, it's always 'following orders and never ask questions' with you. Why can't we have a bit of fun while trying to fix him? Who knows? He could have internal bleeding or suffer from some sort of injury to the central nervous system and, honestly, who knows what but until we actually go on and have a look at this he could be in serious harm." The doctor said, with perhaps a bit too much sarcasm dripping off her words.

"Well, we can't, because he's conscious now." The assistant Donny shot back, he looked at his clipboard and tried to sound out the name silently before continuing with his comment. "Now, Ping, is it? How much of your tongue can you control at the moment?"

"Ah...ah…" Ping tried to respond, he hated this feeling of helplessness that came without the added clarity of a disaster. His memory was a hot soup, and he can't speak.

"O…kay. Where's he from?"

"Rebel Stronghold, is what the data sheet I have in front of me is saying." Donny peered down over with a pocket light in his right hand as he made eye contact with Ping, "Too easy, now. Your pupils are contracting, and are reacting to light in a...satisfactory manner. Can you move any part of your face at all?"

Ping smiled, as that was the expression that came to mind. And successfully blinked and twitched his ears.

"So, 'rebel stronghold', huh? They haven't updated that informality yet?" The Doctor said, as she wrote a sentence in her notepad, "Well, patient seemed to have lost some muscle control due to some undefined injury, but are still capable of controlling facial muscles. That narrows down the scope of recovery therapy, that's...good. Can he walk?"

Donny shook his head, anticipating the request, he carried Ping up and carried him to a scale. "Weight is 17 Horde Units, scales to height measurements. Within acceptable range. Participation in youth training regimes for next six months not recommended. Consult with Physical Trainer to devise customised recovery regimen for full motor functions _strongly _recommended. No visible wounds, possible causes are either internal damage or trauma-induced physical reaction."

"Well, until we can get Ping here to walk or move his limbs, we're going off basic measurements then." The doctor sighed with an inexpressible depth of dissatisfaction. "Phys Eval for patient #0103 is finished. Will resume further diagnosis at a later session. Recording off."

With a click, a recording device that was placed on the table turned off. Ping hadn't really noticed his surroundings as much of his attention was focused on the back-and-forth between the two imposing figures standing over him. Lizardman decided to shift restlessly on his weight as the Doctor said, "Hm. Unless we can read his mind, he is in no state to perform an intelligence test, schedule the intelligence testing to begin in a month and toss him in block D. Now, I believe it is high time to—

A siren blared.

"Crap! The inspector is coming." Donny said, with a hint of surprise and nervousness. He was unprepared for this situation. "What do we do? Stay here?"

"Yeah, nah. Not unless you want to get sent to an outpost. If you think the Fright Zone is too comfortable for you, be my guest." The Doctor raised her eyebrows. "You know the soulless master who holds our yoke won't be pleased if the entire medical wing doesn't go out in unison with happy clappy faces. What could be more important than a surprise inspection?"

Her venomous tone sounded so hostile and attacking that Ping made a note of this and vowed to avoid whoever incurred the ire of this frightening doctor wherever possible.

"Well, bye kid." Lizardman Donny waved a tiny goodbye to Ping just as he turned in the direction of the door.

"Nuh...Nuh…" Ping started out desperately, he doesn't want to be left alone. Not in this scary room full of sharp instrument and scary machines beeping and bloop. "_And especially not with that...voice._"

He shivered. Ping doesn't know when the voice will come back, and he doesn't want to be caught alone with nothing in his head beside that voice. He would rather embrace a deep and dreamless sleep than to stay conscious and in fear of that voice, he was almost certain was why he couldn't talk. Why he couldn't walk. And worst of all, why he couldn't remember his origins or anything before this moment. "Duh...D-d-d-duh…" _Don't leave me alone._

He tried to move, to stretch out his hands, to fly off and hug the lizardman, if he could, just to feel less trapped and lonely. But he couldn't.

He rolled to his side, with great pain and difficulty, looked at the door intensely, just as it was about to close. _Pleasedontclosepleasedontclosepleasedontclosenonononono…_

The door slid close.

The room was silent.

The latch, fell off.


	3. Chapter 3: A Test Of Wit (Ping)

**Author Talk:** So I have decided that, from now on, the chapters will be labelled with POV Headers, and I will retroactively insert POV headers. Thanks for following up to Chapter 3! :D

The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned by Noelle Stevenson and DreamWorks Animation Television, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.

* * *

It was quiet in Block D. There was no noise, no grumble of complaint towards the tasteless meals, it was somewhat strikingly obvious that the entirety of Block D were almost entirely constructed out of ragtag bands of orphans and children who were unable to trace their parentage anywhere. Ping observed that the fellow residents all suffered some form of physical or intellectual handicap that prevented them from receiving the full brunt of the training that was given by the Horde, but absolutely the full brunt of discrimination from every other group residing within the complex.

The Fright Zone was one of those places where almost anyone could pick out the capitol, but completely fail at navigating the labyrinthian constructs of surrounding buildings that were, Ping suspected, primarily designed to maximise utilitarian convenience in terms of physical convenience as opposed to aesthetic cleanliness. Not that being a toddler made the daunting task navigating the multi-levelled roads of the Fright Zone an achievable short-term task. Ping focused on looking outwards to escape the miserable monotony of his new life.

Two weeks in, he was still on the road to recovering much of his present physical capabilities and he was becoming more and more accustomed to speaking, however he had yet to find any friends to exchange long deep meaningful conversations with.

Ping tidied his birdnest hair, as he limped down the hallway, hoping that he'll make his appointment on time. He still wasn't accustomed to walking with crutches, as much as he had tried, even walking for a few steps at a time was still a daunting task. Putting on the requisite white and red Horde shirt, along with white and grey Horde pants each morning would've been a nightmare had there not been robotic assistance.

"Are you ready, Ping?" Kyle asked, as he trotted up to Ping with half a piece of nutrient bar, "It's your big day, you're going to need this more than I do."

"I...don't." Ping said, as he leaned against his crutches for support, "Kyle...thanks, but there's...no need."

"Oh come on, are you kidding me?" Kyle looked at Ping with mock offense, "You need food to be smart! Don't you remember what Officer Octavia said? We need to be smart and strong to fight for the Horde."

Ping rolled his eyes to try and convey his exasperation, it really wasn't an understatement to say that Kyle was a ball of energy coated with a layer of enthusiasm and then wrapped in optimism.

Not that he could current express this sentiment without biting his tongue. Ping moved forward, as he tried his best to nonverbally humour Kyle's enthusiasm.

"The Placement test is your best shot at moving past Block D! Ooooh, this is _such _an exciting time for you, you know, I heard that if it weren't for the condition you arrived in they would've tested your intelligence and knowledge immediately. I think you have potential to reach..." Kyle leaned in to whisper conspiratorially into Ping's ear, "...Block C._"_

The corner of Ping's mouth twitched uncontrollably as he tried to comprehend the sheer lack of ambition that was revealed in that sentence. He wasn't quite sure if he was meant to take it as a compliment or feel sad for Kyle that the height of his expectations rested solely upon being assigned one block higher up in the chain of command.

Oblivious, Kyle's eyes sparkled with longing and a wishful smile spread across his face, "Oh man, Ping, I've rumours that Block C have beds that are actually padded, and there's only two people per room! Can't you think of how beautiful that would be? Enough space to actually spread out your things and enjoy some personal space?"

"But w-w-what about A?" Ping tilted his head, Puzzled as to why Kyle did not reach for the highest possible placement. whatever happened to aiming high?

Kyle pause for a minute, then roared with laughter, as he slapped Ping's back intensely, causing him to almost stumble. "Hahaha! Oh, Ping you have such a wonderful sense of humour! It's nice to think about unattainable fantasies every once in a while to perk up, eh? Positive mental attitude! That's the way we roll! Wait 'til Rogelio hears about this, he's gotta have such a hoot!"

Defeated by Kyle's outspoken dismissal, Ping resigned to an appreciated silence as he finally made his way to the examination room. He turned to part ways with Kyle, sighed, and entered the belly of the whale.

"Do you have any notes? Sheets of pre-filled answers? Hand them over before the exam starts and we can pretend we didn't see anything." No greetings. No warm encouragements there, only a cold guard who gave Ping a once-over and filed him as a potential cheater.

Ping shook his head, and allowed himself to be patted down for any concealed equipment, notes, or any other objects that was on (very) long list of banned items not allowed to be brought into an examination room.

"Exam time starts now. 30,000 seconds until exam finishes." The gruff voice echoed again, and Ping scrambled to the only seat in the room and tapped the electronic touchscreen and began answering the questions.

Numerical Reasoning level 1: Q1. _Which number should come next in the pattern? 37, 34, 31, 28_

_Q2. Which one of the below equations equals 564? A. 500+10 B. 250+5+2+307 C. 200+100+5.13+40.50 D. None of the above_

…

Reading Comprehension level 1: _Read Pg.1-5 of the booklet and use the information given to answer Question 1-17_

…

Language Conventions level 1: _Find the misspelling, then write down the correct spelling._

_Q1. This morning wee went outside._

...

Ping couldn't help it, his mouth twitched uncontrollably into a crazed as a strong sense of Déjà-vu took hold, and he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he had done something like this before and everything about this seemed familiar, yet not quite the same. He never saw those questions specifically, yet a wave of unreality crashed into him. It was like he was trapped in an ersatz version of reality.

The first question? 25. The number decreased by three each time. The second question? B. The spelling mistake? It was 'wee', there was an extra 'e'.

'_Ding! Correct answer! +1 point!'_

'_Ding! Correct answer! +1 point!'_

'_Ding! Correct answer! +1 point!'_

And so it went, the questions posed much less of a challenge than he originally thought, as the knowledge felt almost natural, like dormant muscle memory finally being allowed to stretch again. Ping continued his way through each section of the exam with increasing speed, growing ever more enthusiastic as time went on.

'_Level one complete. Proceed to Level two? Y/N' _

A popup window appeared on the screen, accompanied by a smiley face, signifying a milestone of some sort.

He looked up and found that he still had thirty more minutes to go. Why not? He went on, he progressed past level two, and then level three...and then level four. The language conventions section soon merged with the Reading Comprehension questions at level four.

Humming a half-remembered tune, he breezed his way through level four, which included pattern recognition; multiplication and division; and slightly longer reading pieces. Nothing that he didn't immediately process or beyond his comprehension.

Finally, he progressed to level five, with five minutes left to go, all the sections were combined into one. Reading Comprehension, Numerical Reasoning, and Language Conventions, all merged into one single section.

Tactical Reasoning (level 5): _Q1. Suppose the Rebellion is certain to continue so long as the Princess Alliance lives on, but only in twenty scenarios out of one hundred will the Rebellion continue to exist after the Princess Alliance disbands. Then how many more times is it likely that the observation 'the Rebellion lives on' when the Princess Alliance has yet to disband as compared to when it already has?_

Ping paused read the question once, read it again, and finally answered, "To simplify the statement given, the probable ratio of the event happening is 5:1, therefore it is five times more likely that the Rebellion will continue to exist while being led by the Princess Alliance than when it disbands."

He continued to the next, and final question of level five, just as the clock indicated that he has only two minutes left of his examination time to answer the questions.

Tactical Reasoning (level 5): _Q2. One company of Horde infantry are at the front lines of the army, assuming that under intense attacks that ten percent will break formation. Among those who break formation, ninety percent are cowards. But this understanding is not perfect, as assume there is thirty percent of those who did not break formation who are also cowards. Out of the entire unit, how many are cowards, and using the data deduced from the information above, how would you react?_

Ping broke into a cold sweat as he read the question, this one was significantly more complicated than all the previous questions he had answered beforehand combined. What kind of sadist would sneak in a question like this into a test?

He looked to his left and then looked to his right, if nothing else except to exercise his neck and to feel some sensations at all in the claustrophobic atmosphere of this room.

He pondered the question for a moment, scribbled down the number 100 on his drafting sheet, and extended two branches from the number, with 10 on one side and 90 on the other side. Ping then multiplied 10 by a fraction of 90/100, and found that nine out of the ten hypothetical soldiers are cowards. He then multiplied 90 by a fraction of 30/100, and found that twenty-seven soldiers who chose not to break formation are secretly cowards.

Satisfied with his answer, Ping typed in, "Out of the entire unit, there are thirty-six soldiers who are cowards, but only one out of four of these cowards would choose to break formation, therefore, with the information given, the best choice would be to continue forward with the remaining number to form a diagonal phalanx to push through while a small number either deserts or retreats. To retreat due to only nine soldiers deserting their post would mean a larger loss of morale. The individual is not relevant, preservation of the strength of the unit is paramount."

As Ping finished this final question, the examination concluded. He didn't wait for the guard to chase out, and instead opted to grab his crutches as quickly as possible and stumble out instead. Anything was better than staying even one more minute in that accursed room. He left, breathless and panting. It was too much, his head felt like it would explode and the silence in that room left him fearful of the return of the voice.

He wanted to vomit, and yet he knew that nothing would be enough.


	4. Chapter 4: Somthing New (The Sergeant)

**Author Talk: **Hey all, sorry for the late release. I really ended up not finding the time to upload any chapters during the weekend because of...well, life issues. So...to compensate for this, here are FOUR chapters to make up for it and to prove that I am, in fact, quite committed to seeing this through. Thank you for reading up to this chapter thus far!

The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.

Upload 1/4. ;)

* * *

The Sergeant was not another officer without dreams or visions of higher achievements. Though, unfortunately, he was about seven weeks away from shrieking and screaming his way out of his soul-crushing job of grading intelligence tests for pre-entry-level children and head into retirement. Which kind of put a bit of a damper on his ambitions.

At this point, he figured that the only way he would be able to achieve his ambition would be if he somehow managed to stumble upon a magical platypus that grants three wishes to anyone that can polish its duck-bill to utter-perfection. Which, to put it in the mildest of terms, was not a very likely scenario and something the Sergeant was not at all placing too much hopes upon, but his extensive knowledge of maintaining the aesthetic outward appearances of marine animals would certainly come in handy.

It was quite late into the evening and he honestly was getting bored out of his mind. There was only so many repetitive questions one could correct without them all blending into one, and there's still fifty exam papers left to correct. No, he's not getting paid for this, the overtime is an expected occurrence, and there's _certainly _consequences for him if he fails to correct all the papers on time.

"Pass. Pass. Pass. Fail." For every satisfactory completion of a question or exam, he pressed a button on a piece of machinery in front of him to indicate whether it succeeded or failed and then manually typed in a score corresponding to the level of the exam and the number of questions answered correctly.

Every time he finished grading one, another ten would be waiting on the sidebar of his monitor for him to address. Not to say that there were all that many...'applicants', only that there was a backlog delegated to about three people who had never managed to achieve anything beyond the theoretical practise missions within the Fright Zone. He sighed, "Well, I guess there's not going to be much of an opportunity for me to rest tonight, then."

"Hmm, all questions answered correctly to level five, pass. Four questions completed to level one, fail. Ten questions answered correctly to level one, pass. Two—wait, LEVEL FIVE‽‽‽" He broke out into a cold sweat, if he accidentally managed to let flagrant cheating slide to that extent, he's probably going to part ways with his head before reaching retirement. The Sergeant scrolled back to find the exam records again within the corrected archive. "Come on, come on, where is it? Where is it?"

After ten minutes of frantic searching, he finally found the only piece that corrected up to level five on that day. His face paled, and he exhaled sharply, "Impossible."

**LEVEL FIVE: ENTRY-LEVEL TACTICAL OPERATIONS COMMAND**

He checked the age category of the examinee, and his eyes almost bulged out of its sockets (not entirely unlikely, given that he was half-fish) in shock. "Under ten years o-o-o-old? How?"

With a much more careful eye, he examined all the questions and determined that, somehow, there was no cheating. No information went in or out of the room. No previous contacts had leaked any details of the new examination requirements or questions, and the examinee was from Block D...his gills puffed in and out as he cross-checked the paper with previous years answers for all tested level. No match for plagiarism.

"Are comms on? Unprecedented result. Examinee tested Level Five with no incorrect responses. Block D. Over." He practically screamed into his comms device as he forwarded the examination response to all the senior officers above him on the chain of command that he could think of. A sense of excitement bubbled up within him, if this catch is as big as he thinks it is...he's definitely going to be promoted. And that, is just great.

There was radio silence for five minutes, as he struggled to return to correcting other level one pieces, but his mind kept wandering back to the level five response. According to the statistics, the examinee had answered level one in less than five minutes with no errors, with only level five taking over ten minutes.

"*bzzzt*...*bzzt*..." His comms device suddenly flared to life, and his monitor lit up with the face of Shadow Weaver. With legs cramps, he tried to stand at attention with as much dignity as he could muster after spending five hours glued to a chair.

"Second-in-command!" The Sergeant saluted, as he tried to appear reasonably intimidated by Shadow Weaver.

"Useless cretin, is there any proof that this is accurate?" The voice boomed out of the speakers, "If I were to find out I was disturbed for _nothing..._you will face punishment. Do. You. Understand. Me?"

"Y-y-y-yes." His teeth chattered, "We can reassess—"

"NO! Send a Force Captain to him, he cracks, then either you lied or he cheated. If he didn't crack, then send him to Block A. Could be a positive influence on those good-for-nothing brats. If you waste my time...I don't believe I need to elaborate, do I?" With that, the monitor turned off again, leaving him silently trembling and wishing for some sweet, sweet ocean water.

Almost immediately, he looked up the registry from his assessment device, and found the one Force Captain that would have tomorrow as a day off. He exhaled, "Force Captain Octavia? I don't suppose you mind doing something a bit...uh, unusual tomorrow?"

He knew, from then onwards, that he would have a long and restless night in store for him...


	5. Chapter 5: Fitting In Pt1 (Ping)

**Author Talk: **I am nearly finished with the four promised uploads...will be completed within the day. Gimme a bit. Sorry about not getting it done yesterday, eh...life took over. Will do the promised chapters alongside the usual daily update.

The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.

Upload 2/4. ;)

* * *

It was as Ping was in the middle of eating his lunch, which consisted of a nutrient bar, a glass of water mixed with vitamin supplements that he could not identify, and a tiny bowl of concentrated green paste, that he had heard the loud, impatient, and slightly bored voice-over the speakers.

"Junior Cadet Ping, please come to General Administrations. Junior Cadet Ping, please come to General Administrations." A pause. The sounds of drinking and chewing was heard over the speakers as the kids in the cafeteria 'ooooh-ed' with schadenfreude.

"Ping is in trouble, Ping is in trouble~" A few kids from Block C taunted him as Ping attempted to balance his tray with one hand and both of his crutches with the other.

"Junior Cadet Ping, please come to General Administrations." The voice repeated, with an audible increase in volume and impatience. "Listen, kid, if you don't come within five to the clock, I'm going to be very...let's say, annoyed. You don't want that to happen, now, do you?"

Hearing the rather unsubtle threat, Ping tried to hobble his way to end of the cafeteria, where he could clearly see a door. but, as he was making his way there, a foot suddenly stuck forward, tripping him. His chin was struck by one of his crutches as he desperately tried to keep his tray from spilling his food.

As he nearly fell, time seemed to slow down, if only just a little bit, and he concentrated, and tried to will the tray from remaining balanced just as he was about to faceplant onto the floor. "_Don't spill the food. Don't spill the food. Don't spill the food._"

Then he fell down, with the tray narrowly, almost imperceptibly, avoided tipping in mid-air and landed on the ground without spilling even a drop of the paste. To the sound of a group of people laughing way louder than anyone really should, Ping ignored them and moved his tray as well as the pair of his crutches back onto his hands and continued his journey out of the cafeteria. His head hurt, and he was almost certain there was some causal link between the tray not spilling any food and his onset of a bad case of the migraines.

Finally, with the help of a nearby Horde officer, he made his way to the room. He didn't even need to say his name. At the sight of his face, he was waved through, and with a slight hiss the pneumatic doorway opened.

Facing him was a cramped room with more drawers than desks, and, as though locked in a darwinian struggle of competing for space, entire rows of filing cabinets dominated the room from wall-to-wall. Not a scrap of light paper was in sight, only two large buckets of the exact same type of green syrup concentrate that Ping had gulped down on his way here. Fighting down a slight sense of dread, he placed his tray of half-finished food down on the ground and tried to imagine for what possible reason could he have been summoned to GA.

"SIT. DOWN!" The figure roared. She sat in the middle of the room, slurping down horrific amounts of the green goo and carried two more buckets with her mottled-green tentacles. On top of her orange-and-brown leather chair, she swivelled around to face Ping with a death glare.

Frightened, Ping hurriedly found a chair and sat on it with as much restrained politeness as he could reasonably muster as after hobbling his way through a seemingly-endless winding corridor. "S-s-so what am I called here for?"

"Remember the placement test you took a while ago?" The woman said, displeased, "I'm a Force Captain. I don't generally deal with this stuff, but can you tell me who snitched to you this year's answers?"

"No one. I did them myself." Ping shook his head, confused. "Is...there a problem?"

The Force Captain snorted, "If there's no problems, why would you be here and eating lunch with your sad miserable friends? How did you get to level five?"

"I...pressed the button saying I could continue."

"I pReSsEd ThE bUtToN tO LeT mE cOnTiNUe." The Force Captain mimicked back with an annyoing high-pitched voice, "Save it, if you really did all that, explain your answers to me. For Question Twelve, you wrote' the best choice would be to continue forward with the remaining number to form a diagonal phalanx to push through while a small number either deserts or retreats. To retreat due to only nine soldiers deserting their post would mean a larger loss of morale. The individual is not relevant, preservation of the strength of the unit is paramount'. Why did you write this?"

Ping shifted in his seats in discomfort, "The question did not provide information on where, what kind of locational or strategetic advantage we lack or possess. Therefore, I made the assumption that under a tactics-agnostic situation that if one in ten has considered breaking formation or desertion, then tighter formations are needed."

"Why not order a retreat? Wouldn't the first signs of desertion be reason enough to retreat?" The Force Captain asked, as she slurped down another bucket of the paste. Ping gagged internally, but didn't let that show on his face as he continued on with his response.

"No. Soldiers work best as a collective, but they can only obey simple, not complex directives well. If I broke up the line or commanded retreat in that situation, it's much more likely that the formation would collapse altogether and create chaos without an adequate assessment of the situation." Ping shook his head, he remembered how he answered that question, "The question neither specified whether we are pushing the Rebels forward or in the process of losing ground. But if we're winning, then there's no reason to command a retreat...however, if we're losing, then all the more reason that I cannot order a retreat. Every second that the front line is maintained will be valuable to either bring reinforcements or to mount a counter-attack. Otherwise, it is simply a contest of morales, and only miscalculation could lower morales beyond the breaking point."

There was a tense moment of silence.

"_Oh, what if I answered wrong? Have I answered incorrectly?" _Ping broke out into a cold sweat, as insecuirty beset him. He shifted in his seat, as he mentally mapped out how to best defuse the situation if the Force Captain reacted negatively.

"Bahahahahah!" She roared with laughter, a laugh that erupted from the belly and only ended when it reached the throat. SHe drew a tight, almost bloodthirsty smile, "If only there were more Force Captains with half as much brains as you, the Horde would have take Etheria in a week! I'm thinkin' that Sergeant wasn't far off when he said I would be entertained, well, bugger me mate! Bazza!"

"Sooooo...I passed?" Ping smiled, nervously.

"Oh you did more than pass. Full marks at Level Five. Well, I'm Octavia, we gon' get _very _well-acquainted over the next couple of years." The Force Captain called Octavia smiled, as she appraised Ping once again, and leaned back in her chair."

"Wait, what do you mean 'over the next couple of years'?" Ping asked, a tinge of confusion and belated understanding suddenly dawned on him. Something is going _very _right, and he wasn't exactly sure how comfortable he is with this disturbing idea of him actually _succeeding._

"Oh yes. Welcome to Block A."


	6. Chapter 6: Fitting In Pt2 (Ping)

**Author Talk: **The third chapter done in real time. Please be impressed.

The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. Like, honestly, it is _sooooo _good.

Upload 3/4. ;)

* * *

Block A, when compared to Block D, in the strictest comparative sense of facilities and personal space, was in another realm altogether.

First, there was finally a room that he could call his own, a personal storage locker beneath the bed, and a connected bathroom. At the side of the room was a bookcase with six shelves, each shelf filled to the brim with softcover books and bound documents: science, maths, tactical operations, case studies, documentation of Rebel tactics, and time management guides. Taped to the side of the shelf was a hand-drawn timetable for the week ahead (created, of course, by himself, for future reference).

Hanging from the ceiling was a boxing bag, though Ping sincerely doubted he'll make much use of that any time soon. He sat down, exhausted from being forced to move all of his entire collection of uniform, a mountain full of identity documentation, as well as non-negotiable Handicapped Assistance Devices from Block D to Block A, going back-and-forth, back-and-forth again and again and on and on it goes.

Today was the day he finally moved everything into his new room, and now, he is alone...with his thoughts. In a room by himself.

Ping paced around the room, he knew that he should be happy, and yet he wasn't quite certain what to feel. To be clear, he was grateful that he finally have enough space to stretch about and no longer forced to think about Kyle's _very _loud snoring while counting sheep mentally to block out any chance of hearing The Voice again. He trembled with fear as the thought graced his mind again.

He opened the room of his door, peered out the hallway to find no one nearby, and continued to arrange his room to a meticulous standard before he finally collapsed onto his bed and closed.

"Oh hey there, neighbour! You door wasn't shut so I'm just checking in—woaaaaaah!"

"Woaaah!" Ping exclaimed at the same time. His heart rate approached extremely severe tachycardia. Sweat dripped down his body as he fought an intense urge to panic and scream in fear and relief. Ping assessed the person who entered his room. A girl of average height, and an expression of pure unfiltered curiosity and friendliness jumped backwards just as Ping shot up from his bed.

"Um, are you okay? I...didn't mean to shock you or anything." The girl said, Ping recognised her. He remembered her from a few months back, when he was brought in...when he heard The Voice. Her name was Adora, he recalled, and apparently she had absolutely never worried about anything before.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bit shocked, that's all. I reckon it'll be 'right in a bit." Ping said, "I beg your pardon, but...are you called Adora?"

"Aw, you remembered my name." Adora beamed with both a sense of energy and impishness that Ping had yet to find in anyone else, "I don't generally get new neighbours, it's nice to meet someone new every once in a while. Shadow Weaver always said I shouldn't play with 'those of inferior ranks below my standing', so it's nice to find new people. Oh yeah, I remember when Catra first came in, we had a lot of fun. Would you...uh, like to introduce yourself?"

"I'm Ping. I don't know where I'm from, but I'm happy to be in the Horde right now." He smiled, and leaned down and tried a smile that he hoped doesn't come off as patronising or obnoxious. He waited for a bit to try and say something clever and charming. He wasn't quite clever enough to come up with anything.

So there was an awkward silence for a bit.

"Well, I sure hope you manage to find something to do before morning training starts in an hour." She tried to maintain her smile, as it twitched ever-so-slightly at the edges.

"WAIT IT STARTS IN AN HOUR‽‽"

"I mean, it's literally written on you timetable. Did you...not read it?" Adora pointed her finger at the timetable taped to the bookshelves, as Ping felt a strong urge to collapse into the foetal position.

"I-I-I thought it was seven _in the evening_. Not the, uh, you know what? Maybe I should've asked Octavia more specifically." Ping stammered in a panic, he had been soooo looking forward to collapsing into his bed and taking a long and restful sleep. But nope, a new schedule, new obligations.

If it was possible, Adora looked like she was about to roll her eyes so hard it's going to loop all the way back into her head as a vein bulged on the side of her head. She rushed back out of the hallway to blow a raspberry and then rushed back. "Sorry, I just had to get it out of my system Octavia's such a dumb-head."

"Adora!" Ping looked aghast, "You can't just say such a...rude word! It's profane."

"Well, it's not wrong if it's true. And what's 'profane'?"

"Oh, it's just not respectful language, not appropriate words to describe someone." Ping said, "it's bad, you know?" Ping struggled to piece it together, and reluctantly put on the outer layers of his training uniform. "Are you...not going to prepare as well?"

"Huh? Oh, don't worry, I've been doing phys-ed for an hour already, I'm totally fine. Worry about yourself." She said, "That said, Octavia's just...not helpful, you know? She's always stiff and mean and picks on me."

"I mean, I thought Octavia was a nice person, a bit standoffish, but not who I would necessarily describe as mean." Ping tucked in his shirt into his pants, did some light stretches he learned during his short stay at Block D. He heard shouting down the hallway.

"Oh yeah! I'm going to check on Catra now, it's nice meeting you, though I still insist that leaving your door open and unlocked is rather weird, please lock the door. See you in an hour!"

"Farewell, then." Ping said, giving a short wave. Seeing no one else around, he reluctantly closed his door (though he chose not to lock it), and went to rewriting his timetable, grumbling at medium volume.


	7. Chapter 7: The Ordinary Day Pt 1 (Catra)

Author Talk: Remember how I said, just a few days ago, that I would be able to post four chapters at once? Yeeaaaaaaah, about that, that may have been slightly beyond my abilities. But, hey, fourth chapter done in real time. Please be VERY impressed. Final bonus upload to make up for the weekend tardiness.

The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. Like, honestly, it is sooooo good.

Upload 4/4. :DDD

* * *

"...ra"

"...at...ou...hear...e..."

"Mmmmm...urrrg." Catra groaned as she slowly faded into consciousness to see Adora shaking her by her shoulders. Quite frankly, she knew it was Adora even before she fully opened her eyes. Adora was the only person who actively dares to shake her like a ragdoll on a daily basis. She bites. And that generally summarises all other social interactions she had up until that point in her life.

"You know you're going to be late for Morning Training at this point?" Adora looked at her, an expression of mild annoyance and exasperation was painted on her face. It was not the first time Adora had to do this.

"Nor," as Catra smugly thought to herself, "will it be the last."

It's not that she had any bones to pick with Adora, but it's just that her priorities and Adora's were wildly different. Adora wanted to not just pass, but excel at whatever handed to her, while she wouldn't be all that sad if she was relegated to just playing hide-and-seek with her best-est friend forever. "Can it wait?"

"Can Morning Training wait?" Adora squeaked, "Octavia is leading this morning, of course we can't wait. She's not exactly...you know, like the other Sergeants. She actually enjoys this."

"Don't get me started on this." Catra slinked off the bed noiselessly, as she did a backflip before landing on her feet. "Whoo!"

"I'm...honestly not all that impressed, Catra. But we've only got a few minutes to go. Come on." Adora said, "We've got someone new joining our usual classes, though, so that's exciting, right?"

"Who?" Catra stared blankly, she felt like she vaguely remember something and then immediately forgot about it.

"Catra, you need to stop skipping weekly briefings or at least check the notice boards. Can you read yet? The big words said we've got some company."

Catra looked annoyed and trundled behind Adora, and left Block C without causing too much hassle.

As soon as she walked into the classroom on Wednesday, Catra immediately sensed that something was different.

"CATRA!" The familiar sound of Octavia shouting at her boomed from the centre of the room, where there was a petulant child with crutches sulking by her side. It was a familiar face, she remembered him from a few months back, and yet somehow Catra felt absolutely no desire to seek out new information about who this stranger might be.

Octavia continued in her bellowing voice, "You're—"

"—Late, dragged Adora down with me, run laps after, how could I have overslept again, blah blah blah." Catra interrupted, not wanting to jump start that trash heap of a conversation again. "Are children to be seen, and not heard and all that?"

"Oh sod off, your bletherings are the reason I get you running more laps than anyone else." Octavia said, her anger rising with every syllable she forced out of her mouth, "Blimey, of all the ankle-biters here, you're a whole other piece of work."

It was, for a start, not the most diplomatic way to begin her Morning Training but, recently, she had realised that she had cared less before, and she failed to convince herself to suddenly find the ability to care more or any incentives to become more polite just because of the looming threat of being...disciplined.

Morning Training was generally conducted for those, in one way or another, who already showed exceptional physical or mental aptitude before the age of seven, and could be groomed to become either Force Captains or at members of teams lead directly by Force Captains. Not the most thrilling thing, but at least it keeps her with Adora, and she was satisfied with that, for now.

In the center of the room was a gigantic raised platform, on a small raised dais of marble. The outer sections contained concentric oval rings painted on the ground that indicated running positions, an obstacle course, and a drinking fountain. At the corners of the room, there were storage boxes of miniature versions of Horde weaponry, a dress rack of Horde combat uniforms, and some exercise equipment.

This room was mostly used for conducting emergency meetings, and early exercises. Though Catra personally could care less, she found her place in the line, and stood at attention.

"Attention! You bludgers see this runt here? He's going to be part of the combined class from now on." Octavia said, with a slightly more controlled voice, "Now, don't go judging him by his looks...I know there ain't much ta' go on, but I reckon he's a real powerhouse underneath. Might take a while for him to lose the crutches, but there's still time to whip 'im into shape. Show the new kid how its done. Adora!"

Adora came forward, gave a salute, and started off running. Octavia started a stopwatch, and the group watched as she raced down the tracks at lightning speed, jump over hurdles that was almost as tall as she was, and used the momentum to run off the wall to avoid a sandpit before doing a cartwheel over the finish line. "Twenty five point zero two seconds. Good work."

With an innate sense of schadenfreude, Catra observed the boy's face morph from tired to a look of awe, to a pale sheet of fright as he realised that he'll have to do that too, and to just trembling all over.

Octavia laughed, and violently patted him on the back, which elicited a series of loud coughs and hacking. To which Catra secretly hoped would only cause more discomfort down the line. "Relax, Junior Cadet, you're not going to be doing that anytime soon. Adora's the best in class when it comes to strength, agility or dexterity. Unless you have some special talent we haven't tested out yet, you're not going to get anywhere near that yet."

"So, again, recruits, this is Ping. He's going to be in your classes from now on. And don't ask me why he's special, you'll know soon enough, believe me." Octavia smiled, pushed the kid named Ping forward, Catra sort it was like pushing a lamb into a pack of wolves. He was obviously not, well, without some physical limitations, and she imagined that it won't exactly help him blend like a raindrop in an ocean.

"Hello," Ping smiled weakly, as he gave everyone a halfhearted wave. Catra locked eyes with him, and hissed. He flinched backwards a bit, and Catra giggled as he watch his expression change yet again.

"Twenty laps, begin."

With that, Catra dashed off, her eyes focused on Adora, and only Adora as the world seemed to melt away to leave just her being left behind. Adora, without needing to rest, resumed her place at the front of the line while the rest followed behind.

Time seemed to have passed by almost instantly, as the four laps of intense running was over. No one wanted to be last, because the consequences of being placed last was once an obvious unspoken threat and a consequence they had all witnessed at least once...with the exception of Ping, of course.

Catra cursed, she still wasn't first. Nor was she even close to overtaking Adora, she needed to devise a better strategy to improve her physical skill levels to catch up to Adora.

Though to her surprise, the kid with the crutches weren't the slowest or the last one to cross the finish line. She guessed that he must've figured out how to move with a pair of crutches. The last one to cross the finish line had turned out to be—

"—KYLE!" Octavia screamed, her voice was so loud it was practically like listening to a loudspeaker explode. "How did you manage to be embody incompetence so perfectly? Did you lag behind on purpose?"

"N-n-n-no, Miss," Kyle stood, trembling, as he shuffled backwards ever-so-slowly, to put some distance between him and Octavia, "I was trying my best. Honest."

"Run ten laps, right now." Octavia said, "We will discuss this late. The rest of you will not be allowed to leave until Kyle completes his laps."

And it was then that Catra realised that it will be a long day ahead of her.


	8. Chapter 8: The Ordinary Day Pt2 (Catra)

**Author Talk:** I have decided that I'm not a fan of weekend uploads. I'll upload on weekdays...maybe one chapter a day if I could, fingers-crossed and hope for the best. Currently life is both draining away my Netflix time as well as my fanfic writing time, so I _think _I could do consistent uploads, but I'm not sure whether that'll realistically happen. Thanks for sticking with the story though.

**Disclaimer:** The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. Like, honestly, it is sooooo good.

* * *

Perhaps if there was one thing that Catra could say she was certain of about the new kid, it was that he was a weird, weird person. Also, she was quite certain that his brain might be broken.

As Catra entered the study hall, she noticed the only other person present, Ping, was curled up underneath a table, rocking back-and-forth on his sides as tears slowly trickled down from his unfocused eyes. He stared blankly at something beyond the room, as his mouth moved up and down soundlessly.

She approached slowly, careful to mask the sound of her footsteps as she avoided his line of sight, though she doubted he would've noticed either way. Ping was off in his own world, far, far away from the reality of the Study Hall. Catra recognised that look, it was the look of barely-masked panic and inexpressible grief that she saw mirrored on her own face every time Shadow Weaver disciplined her, and when she had to clean up her wounds and hide her pain...all by herself when no one is watching.

"Hey, are you...okay?" Catra asked, with a sense of uncertainty as she approached him, his sallow looked so brittle it would break at the slightest touch. What sickness that bothers him, it had refused to leave.

He looked, but not directly at her, "Fire...fire, Night. Endless night. Arise from the grave. Terror."

"_Ah. He's from one of the worse off places." _Catra thought, with indecision and uncertainty. On one hand, she would like to say that she knows what she's doing, but on the other hand, she had no idea what she's doing. It's generally Adora who does the comforting and the whole goody-two-shoes things, not her. After a few of moments of wondering what Adora would do in this situation, Catra looked up and asked herself why was life so difficult for her.

"So...are those memories from where you...came from?" _abducted _was the word she wanted to use, but then Catra thought better of jumping to conclusions. There was very little she knows about life, but she knew enough to understand that the Horde wasn't uniquely mean towards her specifically. Not that Shadow Weaver haven't tried her best to prove otherwise.

"Not sure. Voices. Voices. Everything's so noisy and jumbled up." Ping gripped his head harder, as his face contorted in pain. "Ahhhhh...the voice...it...no. It can't be."

Catra initially wanted to take him to the sick bay, but as suddenly as the expression of pain arrived, it disappeared, as she saw Ping's face transform into a look of confusion and exhausted sorrow.

"Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I?"

"You're Ping. Junior Cadet of the Horde, and we're classmates for nearly a day now. I don't know where you came from, maybe some teachers here know? Try them?" Catra shrugged, as she hauled him to his feet when the thought occurred to her that the guy with the crutches might not be the most agile person in the room. "Come on, let's get you back onto your feet."

"Okay." Ping responded, and obediently shifted his weight to allow himself to be carried back to his seat.

"By the way, if you're serious about the last question, you're in the Fright Zone." Catra said, with a deadpan voice.

Ping laughed, it was the kind of laugh that began in the belly and then ends in the throat after chocking on a small piece of candy bar.

Catra furtively examined his open exercise book, just to see how behind he was, only to find—

"—You've already finished Chapter 3?" She exclaimed, shocked that he had already made such quick progress, while it wasn't quite as shocking to her that Ping managed to complete the questions in such a short amount of time, after all, she had grew up with Adora, who had been the very definition of a prodigy...but to be able to complete the required tasks prior to beginning his first lesson and while appearing absent-minded as well as utterly bored out of his mind. Even Adora required several minutes of intense concentration to be able to complete one chapter...to see that in roughly the same amount of time it had taken for her to make her way to the Study Hall had been enough for Ping to complete three…was nothing short of shocking.

"Please, those arithmetic questions were hardly what I would describe as a difficult or time-consuming task, really." Ping said, he looked up at her, not entirely, but, rather just with an upward glance before he took a deep breath, "To be really, really honest, I wouldn't consider multiplication and division to really be a challenge...and the first three chapters were basically that mixed in with some addition and subtraction."

"Well, yeah, but aren't they...hard?" Catra looked incredulous at Ping, "I remember doing those only a few months ago, and I thought they were pretty difficult."

"You're joking, right? Those?" Ping looked somewhat unbalanced, "Is that it?"

"They aren't _that _difficult, I suppose. But there's some harder stuff in the books later." Catra conceded, "I can tell the instructor to not go easy on you when he arrives. You know, that's an option."

"Really? That's so nice of you to be so considerate." Ping's eyes sparkled as he clasped his cheeks in what could only be an expression of delight, as more people arrived, "Hey, look, people are finally arriving. I guess we got here early, huh?"

Catra recoiled slightly, unused to such infectious positivity from people besides Adora. Then she basked in the moment for a bit, as she decided that she quite liked being appreciated, despite the slightly nonsensical context it had happened in.

"Yes, I think we have." The corner of Catra's mouth twitched, almost into what appeared to be a smile.


	9. Chapter 9: Bad Luck (Ping)

**Author Talk:** So fortunately, I have a pretty good idea of where the story is going, so I can reasonably convince myself that I won’t burn out of good ideas for a bit. Again, striving for daily uploads except on the weekends. This is mostly so that I don’t mess up my exams and maintain my sanity. Uncertain of how many people actually cares about this fanfic or whether I’m screaming into a void. But, on the other hand: WHOOOOOOOT!! I’VE REACHED 10K WORDS!!!! This is a bit of a nice milestone, I think. At least it shows that I’m somewhat committed to finishing whatever it is that I’ve started with this project.

**Disclaimer:** The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. Like, honestly, it is sooooo good.

* * *

It was dark when Ping heard the knock on the door, he was fast asleep. Out like a light. Slept like a log. Insensate and unresponsive. Whatever. The complete and total mental and physical collapse of his body could only be attributed to having truly pushed his ‘youthful energy’ to the brink over the day, and are now suffering the repercussions. 

“Bugger off, please.” Ping mumbled in his sleep, he wasn’t sure when it was in the night, nor was he sure how long the knocking persisted before turning into much more insistent thumping...before finally he heard the sound of lock turning and the angry footsteps. His eyes shot open, and he froze.

Force Captain Octavia stared down at him, centimetres from his face. Her face was a barely-contained mask of fuchsteufelswild, her features contorted into a pinched and focussed look of emotional expression that reminded Ping of stubbing his pinky toe on the bedpost one time too many and then hobbling three metres across the room into a cramped bathroom to wash his swollen pinky toe in the washbasin. Not to say Octavia had stubbed little pinky, but Ping’s definitely internally wondering what tiny thing had irritated her today.

“Get dressed. You have a ‘special’ assignment tonight. You have two minutes.” Octavia said, tossing him a dirty look and proceeded to wait outside. 

Ping blinked. “I beg your pardon, miss? But—”

“NO WORDS! Just get changed and report outside! Stand, salute, and respond!” She hissed quietly, but her tone implied no ambiguity and no patience for talkback.

“Affirmative!” Ping saluted, as best as he could, anyways. He really wasn’t sure about a lot of things, and Day One (technically two, it was pretty late into the night) had thus far proven itself to be perhaps more confusing and emotionally draining than he had thought it should be.

Octavia nodded, as she stealthily went outside with care not to wake the other children of Block A, Ping heard rather...colourful grumblings of anger involving the words ‘dumbhead’ and ‘arrgh I hate kids, why can I go back on duty and shoot someone already?’ somewhere in the sentence.

  
  
  


As soon as she left the room, (“ _ She slammed the door rather forcefully, too.”  _ Ping thought, “ _ Oh dear. _ ”) Ping threw on his Horde-issued uniform and left the comfort of his room.

Octavia glared in appreciation, clearly now in a better mood, Ping observed, after he left the room with a minute to spare. “Soldier, come with me, there’s a special assignment in wait. Don’t. Wake. Anyone. Up.” On that note, she walked down the hallway, silent.

  
  


Ping felt a jolt of elation as he imitated her footsteps, since she isn’t about to give any insightful pointers as to how to stay silent, Ping figured that he might as well as observe how she does it. As a trained Horde Officer, Octavia avoided certain floor panellings as she moved, she lowered her centre of gravity by taking a compact posture that distributed her weight evenly, and Ping observed that, when she moved fast, she moved on the balls of her feet and struck forward. 

He wasn’t sure where he was going, but as the hallway stretched out without any signs of a final destination, the sound of his footsteps gradually receded until there was only the sound of silence and the muffled intermittent snoring coming from other rooms. And so it went, until even the snoring disappeared into the distance, leaving only the faint hum of electricity, powering the sleeping beast that is the Fright Zone. 

It took Ping months to properly wrap his head around the immensity of the military apparatus that is the Horde’s base of operations: where the electricity never went out; the beast that lies dreaming in his house, not dead; and every minute of every hour of every day convoy trucks carried either a detachment of Horde Officers or supplies from the conurbation, some return...others, do not. Officers with solemn faces moved from one room to another seemingly without ever communicating, yet somehow aware of their purposes at all times. To observe in action without rest, was at once an act of madness and deep fascination. Never has he seen so many people walk united in one purpose while either in process of bickering with or ignoring each other, and to have their very lives dependent on seamless mutual support.

FInally, Octavia stopped in front of a locked office. Ping stopped, and made eye contact with Octavia, seeing her eyes lock onto him, conveying a complex emotion. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Your footsteps.” Octavia appraised him once again, “Go back to the corner of the hallway and walk here again, in exactly the same way as you did before. Can you do that?”

Ping shrugged, and did what she told him to the letter. As he traced his right foot back into the exact same spot where he had stood, he saw Octavia shaking her in disbelief, a tentacle gently slapping her forehead.

“I think,” She said carefully, choosing her words in a selective and restrained manner, “That you have just mastered silent walking. The footwork was almost textbook, while your posture could be improved...I can’t hear your footsteps. Where did you learn that?”

“Huh?” Ping blinked, “I just looked at the ground and copied what you did. Is there anything wrong?”

There was a pause. 

“You...copied me. That’s it?” Octavia blinked, as she struggled to process what she heard, “Are you sure you haven’t learned it from someone else? Not the Sergeant from Block D? No one taught you anything?”

“Well, no.” Ping said, mildly confused, “Is this...not normal?”

“It’s...normal...after you complete basic training, which you won’t complete for another three years. Sure, it’s the hardest part of the training, but it’s meant to be learnt over a period of three months, not...three minutes.” Octavia looked awkward, uncomfortable and somewhat uncertain as to how to answer, as she tried to find some way of justifying it to herself. “Look, maybe I didn’t make the wrong decision after all, it’s probably for the best.”

She sighed, opened the door with one of her hands, and continued to rest her head between two of her tentacles in exasperation. It was really quite fascinating how she managed to be so expressive with almost every square centimetre of her body to convey raw exasperation. 

“Wow. Oh...wow.” Ping looked at the horrific sight before him and found himself truly speechless. “This is...quite a sight.”

Before him was a room of filing cabinets almost twice his height filled to the brim with documents, photographs, hand-written forms crammed roughly into drawers that positively  _ sagged  _ under their immense weight. A desk with legs sawed in half stood against a wall with two flickering light fixtures hovering overhead. Office supplies stored in a mug. It was madness.

“There was a shortage of office personnel for processing Veterans’ benefits and Civil Infrastructure permits. Just a bit of, ah, backlog here.” Octavia patted Ping on the back in what he assumed with a reassuring gesture, as his legs turned to jelly underneath him. “I figured that, since you seem to have some sort of talent with figures and stuff, I might as well as give you something to do to while away the time. What do you say?”

“Urk. How much...backlog is there?” Ping pointed, with a trembling finger.

“Ah, now that you mentioned it, I...don’t know. I think there’s at least a good three years’ worth of forms inside those cabinets. And it’s just going to increase as time goes on, you know? It’s not like the Horde is lacking in soldiers returning from the front lines. And, honestly, no one’s really too keen on opening that can of worms.” Octavia said, pointing to a can of worms that seemed to be moving of its own accord on the floor. 

“Y-y-y-you w-w-want me to process all of this?” Ping stuttered in horror, “It’s impossible to do this in one night!”

“Woah, slow down there, buckaroo! No one said anything about doing this in one night, you have three hours each night to clean this up, and all that.” Octvia said, “I just want you to know that this isn’t a punishment, think of this as an...early work-placement opportunity.”

“So...what I’m hearing is that you’re going to work me to the bone here.” Ping quipped, looking at the chaos with a thousand-year-stare. “What do I get out of this?”

“You clean up the backlog as much as possible. Whatever it takes, get it figured out, and I’ll…” Octavia hesitated, as she tried to think of a reward that could be attractive enough to be the carrot to dangle over Ping. Suddenly, her eyes widened as inspiration hit her. “Take you out of the Fright Zone! Yep, yep, that was my plan the whole time. If you can get half of this room’s documents processed in...let’s say two and a half years, then I’ll take you out the Fright Zone as my Adjutant, think of the possibilities here: you’ll be on the front lines, it’ll be fun, there’s sunshine, rainbows, whatever you can imagine. It’s all out there, and you get your personal group of minions as well!”

“Really?” Ping asked excitedly, with no foresight on his end and yet to realise that he was being scammed into free labour while sleep-deprived. “Do I get my personal minions right now?”

“Ahem.” Octavia paused, she had said a bit too much, and accidentally over-promised, “Well, I’m not saying that you  _ can’t,  _ I’m just saying that I’ll give you a week to familiarise yourself and I’ll bring you help. How’s that sound?”

“That. Sounds. AMAZING!!” Ping’s eyes glittered with satisfaction, and possibly a little bit of anticipation as he ignored the barely-concealed look of glee on Octavia’s face as she plopped the keys to the office in his hands.

“I now pass to you the keys to the office and I transfer ownership of my administrative privileges of this room to you. Good luck. See you in ten for morning exercise. Enjoytheroomhavefunimgoingleavenowbye.” Octavia said, as she closed the door and disappeared off into the darkness.

Ping blinked. And, for the strangest reason, he felt like he had just sold his soul for a lollipop.

* * *

Octavia made it to the barracks, started a holographic recording, designating the receiver as Shadow Weaver and started speaking.

“Commander Shadow Weaver, as per your instructions, I am well on my way through processing the Horde backlog. I expect halfway completion in around three years. Initial assessment of status seems promising, and I will be reporting back on my progress in a week’s time. Over.” Force Captain Octavia said, collapsing into her chair and as she wiped some sweat from her brow. 

In a slightly cheerful mood, she opened a tub of nutrient supplements and started slurping it down, hoping that blasted pencil-pushing busywork will be enough to finally get her promotion.

“ _ If you can’t wait for it, you gotta get it done yourself,”  _ Octavia smirked, she wasn’t sure where her application was in the backlog, but she figured that if she managed to turn that sadistic woman’s unreasonable busywork into somebody else’s problem, she might as well as be the one who reaped the reward.


	10. Chapter 10: So Help Us All (Kyle)

**Author Talk:** Alright, so I have written 13k words, sort of settled into a routine with the writing. Due to end-of-year exams, however, the uploads will be sporadic and somewhat unreliable all the way until November 20th. At that point, I think I can do regular, normal, self-indulgent updates. Until then, whoever is interested will unfortunately have to bear with a mildly inconsistent *daily* upload schedule. :(

**Disclaimer:** The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. Like, honestly, it is sooooo good.

* * *

Kyle schlepped the last bag of bio-waste from the restrooms into the truck. It was hard work, hauling entire bags of solid (as well as liquid) waste to-and-fro, it's something that must be done. The poop is, unfortunately, not going to move itself. And there's no one else up for the job...

"Seriously, Kyle‽ First you got us assigned to shadow a prison guard for two weeks, now you've got the whole squad doing...this." Lonnie shot him a dirty look, as he almost tripped over a pebble on the floor.

"Watch your steps," Lonnie muttered, as she desperately focussed on anything besides the intolerable smell. "Rogelio is _sooo _not going to be happy about this, and we're going to be late for lunch at this rate. Close the doors."

Kyle struggled a bit, and slammed the rusted-over doors of the truck shut. Sealing some of the distasteful smell off. The truck roared to life, driverless, it rushed off into the distance, towards a processing plant.

He stared at the shrinking image as a Horde Officer slowly walked over, giving them a large thumbs up. "Well, I guess that's this morning's route done. You kids are doing pretty great, keep up the good work!"

"Are you sure there's no other jobs available?" Lonnie looked like she was almost about to break down into tears right there and then.

Hey, look, it's not like I'm the one making the decisions." The Officer looked apologetic, "I am just following orders, I program the truck's routes, operate the air-lock...and you guys haul in the poop."

"It's all my fault." Kyle sighed, "I shouldn't have tripped over the wirings in the prison complex, causing a mass blackout that resulted in two hours of absolute chaos."

"Or that time when you broke, like, fifty dishes in the kitchen because you can't tell the difference between the trash compactor apart from the dishwasher; or when you pressed the wrong button operating comms equipment and caused a Fright-Zone-wide signal jam; or when you—"

"ALRIGHT LONNIE, I GET IT!" Kyle erupted, a choked sob escaping into his voice, "I know I'm just...not good at stuff, no need to rub it in."

"Like, kid, I remember being a klutz when I was a Junior Cadet too. Why do you think I'm not a Force Captain, huh?" The Officer said, shaking his head, "But even at my worst, I'm not _that _bad. I swear you've managed to set a new record for the most number of jobs to be kicked out of as a Junior Cadet. Or maybe just 'as a cadet', full stop."

"Wow. That bad?" Lonnie raised her eyebrow.

"Yeah, that bad." The Officer agreed, as he held his hands out for a fist-bump with the two. "Look, I'm just a nameless mook running around, but if you guys ever need help again, you can count on me to...submit a Statement of Support. No need for formalities here, we're all hauling poop, and there's no pecking order around _that,_ I can tell ya."

"Gee thanks, mister." Lonnie said, answering his fist bump. "KYLE! We're taking a shower before heading off for lunch! And, I swear, if you manage to show up to the canteen smelling like you've spent three days in the sewer...I'm not going to talk to you for three days!"

She marched off, barely restraining her urge to run to the nearest shower, and never looked back.

"Ahhh, life, man. It comes at you hard." Kyle said meekly, as he waved the Horde Officer goodbye, "Bye, Officer. Uh, enjoy your...lunch?"

"Hahahah! I'm sure I won't, kiddo. Force Captain Octavia wants me to shovel manure and _film it._" The Officer shouted back, "I have to get back and clean my shovel for that."

"...okay."

Kyle left for the shower, feeling somewhat relieved that he no longer had to deal with the smell for even one more second. He was not prone to displays of uncertainty, in that regard. In terms of manual labour, Kyle supposed that he drew the bad end of the stick, though he felt a sharp pang of guilt for dragging Lonnie and Rogelio down with him.

After a lukewarm shower, the lunchtime siren blared sharply over the intercoms three times just as Kyle defaulted averagely down the hallway, being one generic face out of many that shuffled towards one united goal of eating some food before collapsing in utter exhaustion. The Horde never stops marching forward, and so everyone else must make sure a poorly constructed sewage treatment system did not spell the end of the Horde.

Kyle collected his food: two pieces of nutrient bars, one syrupy protein-concentrate (it was supposed to be flavoured, but due to the ongoing march westward had unexpectedly requested all the flavourings available...there's no more flavouring), and a pharmaceutical supplement that was supposed to 'boost' his physical development (evidently, it failed to take effect). He shuffled past the people, out of the canteen, and into the restroom.

"One...two...three! Ah, there it is!" Kyle muttered under his breath, he felt butterflies in his stomach as he nervously counted to the third cubicle on the left.

He entered the stall, closed the lid of the toilet. Kyle looked upwards, found the loose air duct, and gingerly placed his tray into the crawlspace. If the tray disappears inside, then he'll climb in; if the tray remained where it was, he'll cry a bit and eat his loneliness away.

Kyle counted to three, and the tray disappeared inside. "_Ah, yes. The others are inside." _Careful not to trip over anything, he climbed into the ventilation chamber, on the third turn to the left, the tubing connected to a half-constructed crawlspace that could not be entered through any other method.

He wriggled out, and felt the warm scaly grip of Rogelio's hands. His heart beat quicker for a second, as he allowed himself to be dragged out. "Oomph." Rogelio grunted, and freed Kyle from the tight vent.

"What took you so long?" Lonnie said, her arms crossed, and sat in the corner examining her food. "You'd think after doing this for so many times, you would've gotten used to it, but _noooo, _you have to get caught in the Vent. Every. Single Time."

"It's not like I want to." Kyle sighed, "I'm just...adjusting."

"That's what you said last time." Ping pointed out, his friend wore a slightly sharper, cleaner uniform than the rest of them. It was the dress uniform usually reserved for those who worked at management.

Kyle elbowed him, "Oh come on, you're really climbing up the chain of command here, Ping. At least one of us got a cushy job filing...whatsitcaled?"

"Stoooooop." Ping drawled, "You know how exhausting it is to climb up in the dead of the night, with nothing except the hum of machinery to guide you and shuffle paperwork for three hours by yourself? It's a nightmare."

"I mean, at least you're not hauling bags of...solid waster and select liquid waste from the restrooms to dump onto trucks after a gruelling day of Combat Training." Lonnie said, trying to find the positives in doing administrative work.

"Yeah, but at least you guys can go outside. And you found this hidey-hole by exploring the...restrooms." Ping retorted, "You try three hours of sorting inbound documents applying for medical benefits, calculate merits and demerits, and figure out if you've just wasted forty-five minutes processing expired documents or an obsolete form not found in the reference guide. I haven't even gotten started on the actual process yet since I'm still arranging them in order! Whoever worked there last didn't bother to create a reference system. I found two military blueprints, _fifteen cadastres,_ and five hand-drawn maps which I _assume_ was attached to an application for sewage processing plant, but I'll never know because I found it inside a fridge."

"Oh." Kyle said, "That sounds awful."

"Yeah, I'm trying to find something positive to say about this." Lonnie shook her head in disappointment.

"_I, cannot." _Rogelio signed, pointing an index finger at himself before tapping an index finger with another. His fingers formed stilted, slow signs so his friends could understand it.

"Wait." Ping said, "This is why I'm actually here. I have a proposition for you guys."

"What?" Kyle and Lonnie said in unison. Rogelio tapped his mouth in solidarity with the two.

"Well, the thing is," Ping pulled out a stack of forms. Lonnie groaned, as she figured what Ping was about to say. "I don't think I can do that stuff on my own. Honestly, even if I worked for every single day without eating or sleeping, I doubt I would be able to get through the workload in three years. Octavia gave me the key to office, and basically made me her deputy in the office, and I get to appoint people to work under me. Now, I'll be honest here, this benefits me more than you all as a collective. If I can get this done quickly, I get to go outside the Fright Zone in an official capacity, and Octavia takes me under her wing."

Ping paused, took a shuddering breath, and continued, "However, because it's well...underresourced, understaffed, and underrepresented in the Horde's administrative process. You won't be able to get a lot of merits out of this job to count towards your general achievements, and it. Will. Be. Hard. There backlog is immense, the attached references are not properly attached, and I can guarantee that, by the time the three hours are up, you will all collapse into a bed seeing numbers and letters. So, you in?"

"Ping," Kyle raised his hand sheepishly, "I don't want to interrupt, hate to be 'that guy', but...who's going to take over our current jobs? I can't imagine the transfer will be smooth."

"Come on, Kyle, you don't actually enjoy carrying 'the stuff' from the toilets, do you?" Lonnie said, as she looked hesitantly at the forms Ping handed out. "I'm glad that you're being honest about this, Ping, I really would hate if I got stabbed in the back later on. It's honestly a breath of fresh air to have all the downsides displayed upfront."

"I...will take that as a compliment." Ping's eyebrows twitched, as Lonnie walked towards him and slapped him on the back. Hard.

"Lonnie, look, it's not that I love the job, but...don't you think the Officers will notice that I've been transferred again? It might look bad on my report." Kyle fretted, "Especially since the assignment was specifically a punishment, don't you think that would cause some inconveniences? What if they reject Ping's applications for the transfer and it remains on our reports?"

Ping groaned. His friend wasn't exactly pleased with his answer. "Dammit, Kyle! Don't fret about the extraneous details. I can submit these forms to Octavia, she can wrestle with the others to get you reassigned. I don't really care about how it'll happen, but I know that it definitely will happen. Besides, you'll be replaced, I can go through the lists and personally handpick replacements for you guys if that's what you're worried about."

"Ping," Lonnie said, "What I don't understand is what exactly you're getting out this handpicking us? We're just ordinary cadets like you, and even that a bit of a stretch. You tested way higher than us; we're assigned to different sectors; and received different treatment. Why us? And do you want to do this? I know you want this, and you're passionate about it."

"Because you're my friends. There had been preexisting research conducted on teamwork and maximising productivity that demonstrated that officers working with familiar teams are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs, have better emotional well-being, and are less likely to be injured on the job. Whereas those without friends in their positions only have a 1 in 12 chance of being engaged." Ping said, not missing a beat. "In order to optimise my productivity, I've decided to prioritise staffing the office with people I can engage with on more immediate levels."

Everyone heaved a collective sigh. "You know, somehow I'm not surprised that this is the reason you chose to have this talk with us." Lonnie absentmindedly combed through her dreadlocks as she shot a look of mock sadness towards Ping. "Well, can't fault you for being honest, I suppose. Why do you want the job so badly? What motivates you?"

"Wow, I guess I have to do it." Ping exhaled. He looked sickly, diseased. Not well, but guarded, restrained. It was like it wasn't his first time pondering what he was going to say. "_He knew what he wants to say, but he doesn't trust us enough to immediately say i_t." Kyle realised, with a slight sense of disappointment.

"Ping, this isn't an interrogation." Kyle said gently, he looked at his friend with his head lowered and shoulders hunched over protectively. It was a look that he was uncomfortably familiar with. "We just want to know, as friends, how we can help you. There's no one else in the room but us, it's okay."

"I want you all to promise me that you'll keep what I am about to tell you a secret." Ping said, "Can you do that for me? I…don't know, this is the first time I'm sharing this with anyone. Can…I trust you?"

"This actually really frustrates me ." Lonnie said, "After knowing us for so long, do you honestly think that we would, what, take advantage of something you feel vulnerable about and share it with others? Do you think we're pretending to be friends with you just so we could hurt you? Ping, unless this concerns the Rebellion, I will take your secret to the grave. I will not breathe a single word of whatever it is that you want to say to us outside of this room."

Rogelio nodded his head, and thumped his chest twice in affirmation.

"I, uh, promise too." Kyle said, as he tried (and failed) to maintain a serious expression on his face.

"Pfft. Kyle, you look constipated." Ping laughed, it was the light laugh of delight that broke the solemn atmosphere in the room. Others soon joined in on the laughter, Kyle laughed nervously. Hoping that everyone was laughing with him, not at him.

"I agree." Lonnie said, "Kyle. Never do that when they are swearing you in. Whatever you do during the Oath of Allegiance, don't do…that face. Ping…whenever you're ready."

Ping exhaled. "I'm different, I'm not like you guys. Some of you lived here in the Fright Zone all your life, this is what you know; some of you came here afterwards, there's something for you to compare it to. But, for me…I don't remember anything from before I arrived in the Fright Zone. My first waking memory was in the Horde. I do not remember who I was before this, not where I came from, not even my parents. Did they love me? Was my parents taken away from me by this war? I…don't remember any of it. And, I'm sure that whatever I had forgotten were things that I _wanted to forget_."

He looked almost feverish when he said it, like a sickness had taken over him that sapped away at his strength to continue. "I don't want to let my ignorance of my past to choke me. Information and knowledge affirms my truth: that I am not a creature of circumstance. The Horde had treated me with kindness, perhaps there's not a lot of love to go around in this place, the hum of machinery, the endless days of working and training and studying, but I feel like this is my home. I feel like you're my family, in some weird, weird way. We are all so different from each other, with different motivations, yet we are all connected through the Horde. This isn't what I wanted to say the first time, but...I want to serve the Horde, but I want to know who I was. It won't be easy...I'm not even sure if what I'm discussing counts as treasonous thoughts...but I knew that, if I worked at an office position, I might be able to find documents pertaining to how I was found, who transported me to the Fright Zone, and where I came from. With the aide of Force Captain Octavia, I could go further than I could have if I tried to to do it alone, unassisted, I don't have sneak into the filing systems to look for documents, and I have the chance to go outside the Fright Zone at some point in the future one day. I will serve the Horde, and I want to serve, but I want to have lay my roots rest. To not be disconnected, so that I can claim my future."

There was silence as tears began to fall down from his eyes. "Sorry. I'm sorry. It's such an immature idea. I don't know what the future has in store for me. It's my desperate cry for help. It must be an idea like treason, to want to know what it's like outside the Fright Zone. But it haunts me."

"It's okay." Kyle said, hollowly. "_Nothing's okay. Ping is crying, and the best I can say is 'it's okay'."_

"Ping," Lonnie said, with a measure tone, "_I _don't think this is as bad as you think it is. _I _don't think there is anything wrong in wanting to know a bit more, or whether there's anything to be ashamed about. But perhaps there is some merit in not telling Octavia or anyone else about this. this _could _be labelled dangerous."

With bleary eyes, Ping looked at Lonnie, "Well, this is my goal. This is what drives me. What about you, Lonnie, what drives you?"

"I..." Lonnie looked pensive, she carefully thought through her answer as she gave the closest approximation of what she was confident that she knew about herself. "I want to work hard, to succeed and not let failure and laziness define my identity. It hurts, when I am not the first one picked for the team in the combat sims. It hurts when I cannot see others look back on me, leaving me behind. I'm scared of that, I don't want to ever feel like I'm left behind again. I don't care about the future, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet, I don't know much of the past...but I live in the present. I cannot change the past, I cannot see the future, so I can only focus on changing my present."

"We're here for you." Ping said, "There's nothing about you that is lazy, Lonnie. I won't lie to you on this. I know you, and I can tell you at least this much."

Lonnie sniffled, and covered her face with her hands.

"What about you, Rogelio?"

_"I. Future. Strong. I prove them wrong." _Rogelio signed furiously, he tried to express his emotions, his hopes and dreams with what limited vocabulary he had available. He tapped himself with his index finger furiously, before finally taking out a sheet of paper to write down his thoughts. He passed the note to Lonnie, and gestured for her to read it out loud.

"'_I am not the same as the others, my name is different, my appearance is different, and I can't express myself in the same way others can. People had laughed at me, mocked me for being who I am, attacked what made me _me_. I want to prove them wrong. I am not a liability, but a person who can think, feel, and understand. To want is not wrong, is it? Since I cannot change who I am, I must better my future'. _Rogelio, you are enough." Lonnie read out the letter with a trembling voice, as she read the last sentence.

"Rogelio, I know you." Kyle stared at him, "We can make it. For better or for worse, we're here. My words can't change you, nothing I say could change this reality, so I can only hope that you know that we are your friends."

Silence.

More silence.

"I don't know what I want." Kyle said, after all the eyes rested on him. "I've bounced from job to job, insult to insult. I'm only ever trying to succeed where people told me to succeed. The Officers had always told me that I was incompetent, that I will never amount to anything. I...don't seem to have a talent. I'm not a sharp shooter, not a fighter like Adora, not as diligent as Lonnie, even. Rogelio was always one step behind me, making sure that I don't trip over the floor tiles or not accidentally breaking plates on the floor. I'm lost. All this time, I was simply...following orders."

"There's still time, Kyle. It will be years before we're Senior Cadets." Ping said, "And it will be a long time before we are sworn in as Soldiers of the Horde. This is us. We are here, under one building, unified under one creed and one uniform. Let's make a pact here: we're not the most exceptional people here, but if we help each other, we can prove ourselves. We can affirm each other's achievements. This is worth...something, right?"

"Right."

"Right."

"_Right."_

"If you guys want to work with me, sign the forms, we can do this." Ping maintained eye-contact with everyone, and yet Kyle felt that it was him that was specifically singled out. "I know we aren't the best of friends. I...don't know how this is supposed to end. There's such a thin line to walk sometimes."

"Ping. Give me the form. I'll return it by tonight." Lonnie said, "Think about what we said to each other today, and tell no one else. I will take your secrets, your unfulfilled ambitions to the grave if I have to. But I won't back out of this promise."

Kyle and Rogelio each took a form, silently.

"I think I feel better venting just a bit here. Thanks" Kyle said, he looked at Rogelio as he talked and hoped that he could learn more signs so he could communicate with Rogelio more.

Rogelio opened the latch for Kyle to crawl through.

"I do, too." Ping said, he clasped his hands together. "It is my first time saying what has been on my mind for so long. I don't want to lose this moment. I want all of us to work together for these three years. United we stand."

"For the glory of Hordak and the unity of Etheria." Lonnie said, "Aye, united we stand."

_And divided, we fall. _Or so the saying goes, but no one wants to finish that couplet.


	11. Chapter 11: A Good Place Pt 1 (Ping)

**Author Talk:** The gap between my last update and this one is acknowledged. I hope y'all don't think of this as some sort of laziness on my part. I don't want to appear as though I'm sloppy with promises, but sometimes life happens and it prevents me from working on this story. I really want to finish this. So I'll try my best to write a bit each day. Who knows? Maybe this story will go somewhere. -HB

**Disclaimer:** The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. The book adaptations are also pretty nice, buy them if you have the financial freedom to do so...or borrow it from your local library. I personally believe it's worth the time to check it out.

* * *

The sound of gunfire rattled through the room, Ping cursed. The chill of the air-conditioned cold made his grip on the blaster stiff and uncomfortable, not ideal. He wasn't as prepared as he should have been. Had that been an accurate anti-personnel weapon, he would have been at least heavily injured. Perhaps even killed.

"Fire in the hole!" He shouted, leaping to the nearest cover he could find, dragging Kyle down with him as a beam of laser narrowly grazed past his helmet, almost triggering the sensors.

"What?" Kyle looked confused, which was par for the course, but not exactly the desired outcome of the scenario. "Where's Adora?"

"Come on, Kyle, do you want to fail the sim or not? One hit by the 'Princess', and you'll be out of commission. Crouch down, don't move." Ping panted with exhaustion, the high-stress activity was taking a toll on him and it wasn't even five minutes into the exercise. He looked around, Adora charged the front line, and was engaging directly with the 'Princess', temporarily distracting it.

"_Well, at least that's one less thing to worry about_," Ping thought, he can't fortify his cover and his exhaustion meant that any attempt at pretending to be the hero would backfire. The risk of having his nightly shifts extended was far greater than whatever fantasy he have about physically overpowering the 'Princess'. He turned back to Kyle, "Follow behind me, here's the plan: we're going to rush to the edge of the room, climb the rafters over there, and cover Adora. It's a good vantage point. You stay there, and I'll rally Lonnie and Rogelio as reinforcement as soon as I see an opening."

"Um, would Catra be better suited to climbing?" Kyle whispered meekly, "I feel like I—"

"Well, it would be nice IF SHE WAS HERE! Listen Kyle, you know how she is: not a morning person. If you think I'm going to wait near the door for her while you run off like a headless chicken and gets tagged by the laser, there's not a lot I can say. Follow. Me. Silently."

Kyle nodded. And Ping decided that now was decidedly not the best time to make Kyle lose his already-low self-esteem. "Never mind, Kyle, you're good enough. Just believe in yourself." Ping forced a smile.

The odd thing was, Ping remembered how to walk without sound, after that night when he decided to imitate Octavia's footwork, he had never had much trouble with uneven steps again. Though he wasn't much of a soldier, he realised that the silence of footsteps was a rarely appreciated skill in a cacophony of noise. There's only so many people a simulated 'Princess' could engage with, and as long as it didn't detect you, traversing between its blind spots was almost effortless.

As Ping dragged Kyle to the rafters, he brought out the standard-issue climbing kit, and a decidedly not standard-issue extended scope and handed them to Kyle. "Go up, whenever Adora is more than four metres away from the 'Princess', shoot the eye. If it notices you, uh, swing yourself on the rope and hope that the sysadmin haven't updated its auto-aim yet."

"I don't know, Ping." Kyle climbed up the rope, "I'll do what I can, but I'm not sure if I could help."

"Well, good luck then." Ping said, a tiny smile crept up his lips. Suddenly, there was a loud screech of sharp metal clashing against metal, a sound that Ping was all too familiar with by now.

"AAAAAHHHH—" Kyle screamed, before being forced to swallow the rest of his screams down his throat as a stray sentry bot leapt towards them.

Ping fired a shot towards the noisemaker component of the bot, and hissed at Kyle, "Well, Kyle, what are you waiting for? Climb up, defend your position, and warn me over the comms for any more ambushes. The longer we stay huddled under the rafters the more likely we're going to become targets."

Fear was a very strong motivator, Kyle climbed up the rope and gotten to the vantage point. Ping nodded imperceptibly, and retreated to another defensible position to assess his distance from Lonnie and Rogelio.

Lonnie was on one side, adjacent to Adora's position, aiming a bola at the 'Princess' to try and paralyse it from moving. Rogelio was on the other side of the room, busy disabling sentry bots.

Ping sighed, Catra is late, and the group is hopelessly split up. He tuned his comms channel, flicking through radio static before finally finding a stable channel. "Hey everyone, Ping here, Adora, Kyle is covering you, he should be finishing his set-up annnnnny...wait, never mind, I think he dropped something from the rafters. Anyways, uh, retreat four metres to the four o'clock position. Rogelio, I need you to lure the sentries to me. Lonnie, get back here, stop trying to throw that bola. We can set up a choke point to eliminate the sentries. Over."

There was a collective groan over the comms. "Is Catra late again?" Lonnie complained, "And dammit, Kyle! Hurry up and start covering Adora, what are you _doing_? Over."

"Hey, it's not like I'm just doing nothing up here." Kyle said, "You try assembling a sniper fifteen metres off the ground while everyone's yelling into your ear. 'Do this', 'Do that'. I'm trying my best...uh, over."

"Hey Kyle, a little help here?" Adora yelled, "Over."

While they bickered, Ping grabbed the broken sentry bots' body and whatever that isn't pinned to the ground to form a makeshift barricade. He looked at Lonnie, who was doing an impressive job of moving to a defensible position while also bickering over the comms.

A mechanical beep and a small grunt echoed over the airwaves. Rogelio was diverting the sentries their way. Ping aimed his blaster over his barricade. "On the count of three, we fire. Over."

Seven metres.

"Three." Ping's muscles tightened, as adrenaline coursed through his body, he felt his heartbeat thumping in his ear.

Five metres.

"I have a clear aim on two sentries." Lonnie's voice crackled over the comms. "You take the right. I'll handle the left. Rogelio, cut off their exit."

"Two." Ping counted down, almost breathlessly. Four sentries, disabling them all will take two shots each. One to the head, one to the core...just in case.

Four metres. They were so close, Ping could see their steel, metallic bodies beneath the simulated overlay of a cackling evil knight.

"One."

"Fire."

_THUMP THUMP THUMP-_

The sound of metal being broken apart was loud, high-pitched, and not-at-all a comforting sound amongst the onslaught of noises. As three coordinated attacks from three different directions, the sentries were finally disabled. The simulated graphic of four knights convulsing on the floor shimmered for a bit, and finally disappeared, leaving only the husks of the training bots behind.

Ping peered at smoking craters in the cores of the damaged bots, "Guys, I think we've neutralised the targets. Good job. Kyle, is there any more sentries we need to take care of? Over."

"I think that's it." Kyle confirmed, "Did I do a good job? Over."

"Yeah, you did great." Ping said absentmindedly, "Lonnie, Rogelio, form a line and we're going to back up Adora here. Adora, we are about twenty metres from your position. We're going to switch places with you in about two minutes time, remember what we rehearsed last time? Over."

"Cool, got it." Adora grunted, doing a backward somersault while avoiding being hit by the laser. "Where do I retreat to? Over."

"Kyle, I'm going to set up a channel between you and Adora," Ping said, "You guys get thirty seconds to discuss where she's going to retreat to next, and we'll tag her out. Is that clear? Over."

"Yowch, got it." Kyle muttered.

Ping rushed to join Lonnie and Rogelio, he was sweating profusely at this point, but put up a tough face. "Why can't they tone down the combat difficulties?"

"I mean, I suppose it's because Octavia enjoys watching us suffer." Lonnie raised an eyebrow, "Do you think we should move towards Kyle or away from him? If we move in his direction, the upside is that we'll be covered...the downside is that we'll be covered by Kyle. Not exactly the most secure position, if I have to say it. Moving away from Kyle means that we won't get cover, but we will be engaging the 'Princess' from a blind spot. Your call."

"Away from Kyle." Ping said instinctively, "We move towards the seven o'clock position, and tag Adora out." He turned on the comms again, "KYLE! Have you talked it over with Adora? We're waiting to make a move here. Over."

"Yep, no worries. Ready when you are. Over." Kyle confirmed, he sounded tired and already mentally drained from the fight.

"Alright, I'm ready." Adora shouted over the comms, and leapt behind a row of destroyed sentries and drones.

"NOW!" Ping shouted, no time for formalities. Lonnie threw the bola at the 'Princess', trapping it. Rogelio and Ping marched up, firing repeated shots before the simulation stopped responding.

Lights flickered on, and the holograms disappeared from existence, leaving only a room sparsely populated by broken limbs and the occasional flicker of electricity from exposed wiring on the body of the bots.

Ping took off his helmet, panting. Just as the sound of slow, exaggerated clapping filled the air.

"Well, well, well." Octavia sauntered over, with a vaguely smarmy attitude that must've taken years of practise to perfect. She clapped with all of her tentacles before she fixed her eyes on Ping. "8 minutes and 43 seconds. I believe that was the fastest clearing of this scenario by any group of either block A, B, or C. Colour me impressed, Junior Cadet Ping. Not many would claim to have such a natural control of battlefield coordination at your age."

"Gee, thanks." Ping tried to not sound too sarcastic, "I'm sure it must've taken you all week to come up with such an...extensive compliment there."

"The Horde will not tolerate such insolence, do you want to be reported to—"

"Alright, I'm here, what did I miss?" A voice called down from the hallway. Both Ping and Adora drew in a sharp intake of breath.

"Oh if it isn't Catra." Octavia drawlled, "I see you have returned from your doubtlessly wonderful adventures to join us in the training room. Oh, allow me to thank you for gracing us with your presence, _you royal highness_."

Catra clenched her fists, but the smile remained on her face. "Well, I'm here now. When does the combat training start?"

"Um, Catra...we just finished." Adora said, her voice barely a whisper, but everyone in the room heard it loud and clear.

"Yes, now, if you would be so kind, Catra, be a dear and clean up the toilets. I heard the cubicles clogged up again. They're always short on 'willing volunteers'. Go report for duty, please." Octavia said, as though she was relishing delicious revenge. "Ping, I'll talk to you later, this is not over."

"What, you're going to forward a letter of commendation to Lord Hordak?" Ping said with a deadpan expression on his face.

"Oh listen here you little sh—"

"COULD FORCE CAPTAIN OCTAVIA REPORT TO THE WAR OFFICE PLEASE. COULD FORCE CAPTAIN OCTAVIA REPORT TO THE WAR OFFICE PLEASE." An announcement echoed through the hallways and reverberated through the room.

Octavia's face turned red, then an impressive shade of purple as she stormed out of the room.

"Wow, someone's in a bad mood." Catra commented, an expression of schadenfreude-induced glee was practically plastered on her face as she walked towards them.


	12. Chapter 12: A Good Place Pt 2 (Ping)

**Author Talk:** Okay, so I think I'm not doing the whole 'updating fanfiction' thing very well, given that I'm not exactly updating the story as frequently as I promised to. However, I'm going to see if I can get back into the swing of things if I try to get 1,000 words or so done each day. Probably achievable. Not a lot of effort, and brings the story closer to the good parts that I'm really eager to write. So...I think it's going to be improving from now on. Though because of exams, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get done, but this has been pretty for me thus far.

**Disclaimer:** The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. The book adaptation are also pretty nice, buy them if you have the financial freedom to do so...or borrow it from your local library. I personally believe it's worth the time to check it out. The Rebel Princess guide is VERY high on the list of books I plan to buy for Christmas.

* * *

"Ping, I have to say it, you did...um, great today. Really led us into victory there." Adora laughed, violently patting Ping on the back.

"Arrgh…" Ping groaned, as he felt like his back was about to break under the force of aggressive friendliness. "I mean, thank you. Appreciate the sentiment, Adora, but you're literally about to break my back."

"Well, from what I gathered, Adora rushed straight off to fight the 'Princess'. I was late." Catra counted on her hand sarcastically, "That left you, Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio to deal with the rest. If someone didn't end up doing something to gather everyone together, Kyle would've probably managed to get you guys all placed on garbage duty."

"HEY!"

"Huh." Ping said reflectively, "Well, I guess I never thought of it like that. I mean, it's not like anyone really challenged me on my decisions or anything. I...don't know how to feel about that."

"Well, as our new commander, you can order us to tremble with fear and feel happy about it." Catra mimicked Octavia's semi-imposing, commanding tone in a joking manner. A lazy smile twitched at her mouth. "If you don't know what to do, have no need for worry, your leader shall give you your directives! Like '_ARRRGH, INVAAAAADE BRIGHT MOOOOON!_'"

"Hah! That's a pretty good impression," Ping observed, "Wait a few more years, add a bit more rumble to your voice, and I reckon your rank would be high enough to be scaring the junior cadets all day, every day."

Adora laughed.

"What, you're just going to betray your friend just like that, huh?" Catra scowled, "Ping's not funny. Get over it."

"Geez. Catra, lighten up." Adora giggled, "It's not that big a deal."

"Urgh," Catra huffed, she turned her head away from Adora and maintained a look of mild annoyance. "By the way, Ping, you going okay with that stupid side-job Octavia scammed you into?"

"Hey! I take offense to that!" Ping protested, but continued walking a distance behind Catra. "And for your information, it. Is. Going. Fine."

"So, I don't think the inbound pile of work is going to be finished anytime soon.." Kyle said, slowing down slightly to allow Ping to catch up. His footsteps reverberated loudly down the hallway as he walked. "We haven't actually gotten started processing the documents yet."

"Dammit Kyle, you're supposed to say that in front of others..." Ping cringed. "Yeah, well, I'd rather you guys familiarise yourselves with the reference guide first before rushing into processing the forms. Running around like headless chickens will be a very bad look."

"Cool, cool, I get it, man." Kyle nodded along. Ping knew that Kyle was only pretending to understand what he wanted to do, and, to be frank, he does not get it. "What's a chicken?"

"You're joking." Ping looked at Kyle with an expression of bewilderment, trying to call his bluff.

"What? No!" Kyle looked confused, and then shook his head in denial. "What's a chicken?"

"Yeah, Ping, we want to know too!" Adora protested. "Sharing is caring, man. Tell us."

"Um." Ping stopped in his tracks, "Oh dear, they're serious."

"It's, like, um, this small-to-medium sized creature that eats grain, and have a beak...with wings and clawed feet. You know, and makes babies from the same orifice they excrete their food." Ping said, wincing as he landed his foot in an awkward position. The bruises on his feet from this morning's training session didn't disappear into thin air. "Arrgh, bugger all this for a lark, I could really do with some water right now."

"What?" Kyle said, "...I somehow feel like I have more questions than answers after listening to your explanation."

"They're like really fat birds that people fatten up to eat, m'kay?" Ping responded, he felt the beginning of a headache coming on, and he really doesn't want to deal with this nonsense.

"What's a b—"

"NO." Ping said, his eyes bulged out in frustration, trembling, he raised a finger, and stared daggers at Kyle.

"Uhhhhhhh, Ping, you're scaring me." Kyle laughed nervously, backing away slowly towards a wall with both of his hands raised protectively. Somewhat ironically, given Ping's rather frail and unthreatening stature.

"Like, gee, t-t-t-the weather's great today." Adora said hurriedly, trying to change the subject.

"We're indoors." Catra said, her smile widened.

"..."

"Anyways, is Lonnie going to be around tonight?"

"Huh? Oh, she notified me ahead of time that she won't make it tonight." Kyle sighed as well, "She got to cram for an exam she has tomorrow. Its just you, me, and Rogelio...trapped in the office for three hours, organising papers into categories and doing nothing productive. Again."

"Kyle, you know it's not true." Ping said idly, as they finally reached the office room. Now, there's a shiny plaque on the door that read '**OFFICE OF VETERANS' BENEFITS AND CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE**', admittedly less of an office and more a place where bureaucratic hopes and dreams come to be processed into non-existence, where waiting times could be counted less in working days and more in terms of _years_. "We do work."

Ping opened the door, and stepped into the room. A small twitch of satisfaction fought on the edge of his lips.

The room was reorganised into five separate desks, denoting different geographic locations of where each document was submitted placed onto five workstations. As opposed to just one lump of paperwork haphazardly piled right till it reached the ceiling. A few nights ago, when he had first arrived here, it was less a room and more of a containment structure holding back thousands of pages of application forms, submissions, and weaponised office supplies. Now, it's...organised anarchy, which was nice, as now Ping at least knew which part corresponded with which.

"_I've organised the room. Exactly the way as you requested it, is this OK?_" Rogelio was already clearing one of the piles on the Veterans-related workload into folders of individual applicants. Ping smiled right back, and made an OK sign.

"No, I'm serious, Ping. Today, we're going to have to separate at least ten new piles of paperwork that just came in. Are you sure getting half of it processed is achievable even in three years?" Kyle sat down in one of the chairs and started practising his frown. "It's not like people suddenly stopped applying for stuff while we're here working to make the backlog smaller. You sure we got anything done just by rearranging some chairs and tables?"

"Kyle, if complaining ever got us anywhere, I'm sure Etheria would've been conquered by the Horde already." Adora said tiredly, taking a seat in one of the larger tables. "Each decision will be informed by a range of technical, managerial procedures as outlined in the reference document. Besides, good friends like us help out when we have the spare time to just to help get it over with. Now isn't that exciting?"

"Yeah, Kyle, listen to Adora," Ping sighed, rubbing his temples. "Trust me...this will work. It creates administrative convenience through assigning clear jurisdictional limits to documents you process and allows for specialised review of documents. The division of workload is clear, simple, and sane. Do I need to draw a diagram for you to understand how this works?"

"N-no, Ping. I don't understand exactly what you're doing, but I'm just going to go along with it." Kyle groaned, "Lonnie, Rogelio, and I are technically your henchmen in this room."

"Oh there's nothing 'technical' about it, Kyle. You're my underling in this room and you better get used to that fact." Ping sat down in the big desk near the back of the room, leaned back in his chair with a chuffed smile, and picked up a ragged book with yellowing pages. "Page 1, Section 1(a), 'all officers that rank below the one vested with the key of the Office must obey all commands issued unless it conflicts with the purpose of the Office'. Oh dearie me, I think I have fallen in love with this job."

"Alright, alright, don't lord it over us now." Kyle sighed, "Let's just get it over with."

Ping nodded, pointing at the desk facing the door on the right hand side of the room. Kyle muttered something under his breath, and trudged in the general direction where Ping pointed, less than enthusiastic about the paperwork in front of him. On it were two piles of papers placed in a tray that read **INBOUND** and another somewhat-empty tray that read **OUTGOING**. Similar trays of paper were found on all the desks in the room. A large trolley remained stationary right next to the desk, prepared to be filled with processed documents at a moment's notice.

And so it was, Ping returned to the documents on his desk. He looked at the first piece of document on the desk: an application for the construction of a water tank over the Eastern side of the Fright Zone, with almost two hundred pages of supporting documentation accompanying the documentation. He sighed, and picked up the cover letter to read through the application.

"._..In compliance with the procedures outlined in Section 5 of the Horde Building Act, the 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for the active protection and maintenance of a Class 3 water-distribution structure to supply the Eastern Regions of the Fright Zone. Per the last communicated to intent to construct the structure, enclosed is the proposed building plan, a request for 200 soldiers to be attached to the 3rd Engineering Division to begin immediate construction and protection, as well as the provision of all materials necessary to begin..._" The cover letter rambled on, citing an excessive amount of obscure building codes and then went on for two more pages about the specific geographic position of the water tank and attempted page-long outline of the tactical advantages of an additional water tank in the Eastern Regions of the Fright Zone. The form was submitted yesterday, but the crumpled, pulpy paper it was written on made it feel like it was written years ago. Ping doubled-checked the date this was submitted, and sighed. Someone does not respect paper, or the person who would be forced to sift through their hundred-page-long application enough to write legibly on proper paper.

He flipped through, and looked at the building plans and the enclosed requests for materials with furrowed eyebrows. "Diamonds? Metal plating? Twenty 240x50mm load-bearing support columns?"

The requested materials didn't add up. He flicked through the pages of supporting documentation, hoping to find a scatterplot or any sort of graph to illustrate the correlation of the materials requested against the discussed security benefits of the requested items. There were no graphs.

"You okay over there?" Adora looked up from her work and asked curiously, "I'm totally not distracted trying to find literally anything else to do or anything."

"Yeah...I think I'm okay," Ping hook his head, "It's just that I'm reading two hundred something pages of engineering proposals for a single water tank and there's not a single graph outlining any of the data they're discussing. The building plans don't seem to be wrong...something about this is a bit off. I'm going to have to reject this application. I just don't feel any confidence about this plan."

"There's a hundred pages for yours?" Kyle looked up incredulously, "All the applications in my tray have less than fifty pages of supporting documentation. It does sound like an excessive amount of writing with no graphs in it."

"Yeah, pity. They put in so much work as well." Ping pressed a large red '**REJECTED**' into the front of the document. Opened an entry book, and wrote down the serial number of the document and the date before walking over to the corner of the room to dump the folder into the tray.

"Hey, uh, Ping, dumb question, but whose jurisdiction does this office fall under?" Catra looked at Ping, as she stood up with a look of irritation on her face. "I don't know why they picked you of all people to look after this place, but you might as well as tell them that they don't know what they're doing and it was a mistake to ever consider Octavia to have the capacity to care about this pencil-pushing busywork."

"The office that you want to insult is, uh, the War Office." Ping said carefully, looking at the rows and rows of pipes and tubes on the ceiling for signs of Imp skittering around before continuing. "And, for your information, Catra, the pencil-pushing busywork involve rejecting way-too-elaborate plans for water tanks that would've depleted the Horde of resources and looking after the heroes of that fought in the war before us."

There's a moment of silence before Catra muttered something under her breath and glared at Ping. "Look, I don't think this is the place for me and I'm already kind of regretting the decision of helping you out here, you think you could sheathe that attitude of yours for a second?"

"Fiiiiine." Ping rolled his eyes. "Look, just bring the trolley to the War Office then, tell them I'm submitting a complaint about the 3rd Engineering Regiment for being terrible people and not including graphs."

"Oh, is that what you want?" Catra suddenly perked up with an evil smile on her face, that was when Ping began to regret the way he worded that sentence. "Well, if that's what you wish for, I can only happily oblige."

"Wait noIchangedmymind—" Ping began to move forward, but speed wasn't on his side. Catra pounced forward, seizing control of the trolley and rushed out of the room with breakneck speed. "NOOOOOOO!" Ping wailed one last time as he looked at the rapidly disappearing silhouette of Catra rushing down the hallway with the trolley of documents cackling maniacally.

His knees buckled, Ping sank onto the floor as his upper lip trembled in a distinctly uncharacteristic way as he contemplated all the excuses that he could think of to counter the inevitable lambasting he's going to get at the hands of Octavia. Somehow, he just knew that he's workload was about to be doubled.

"Well," Adora walked out, gently placing a hand on his shoulder, "There's a sick guy who desperately needs a kidney transplant approved. You wanna come back and look at that instead to brighten your mood?"


	13. Chapter 13: The Interview (Ping)

**Author Talk:** Due to exams, uploads had become sporadic. I apologise for that. And so, to reiterate, I'm going to take the story somewhere and I fully intend to do at a somewhat regular pace.

**Disclaimer: **The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release. The book adaptations are also pretty nice, buy them if you have the financial freedom to do so...or borrow them from your local library. I personally believe they're worth the time to check it out. The Rebel Princess guide is VERY high on the list of books I plan to buy for Christmas. #fan

* * *

Ping stared at the man in front of him with narrowed eyes and a suspicious squint at a distance, as it usually is when interrogating people with poor bowl movements. The man lying down in front of him, with long white coveralls and goat legs sticking out from beneath the clothing, bleated.

The room was small, cramped, and covered with the smell of medicine and pre-made food that somehow made the gunk they served at the canteen seem like multi-flavoured delicacies.

"So, um, sir," Ping coughed, "How do you like your new kidney?"

"Blaaaaaaaaah!" The man-goat responded, "I-i-it is better than slowly dying from inside, I suppose. Young man, DID YOU HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID?"

"Hm?" Ping looked up from his maths assignment, "Sorry, I got an algebra assignment due tomorrow, so I am, um, multitasking. Yes, sir, I will…note that down in the report."

"Young people these days," He coughed violently, staring at Ping with eyes that had seen some things better left unsaid. "They don't get it like they used to. It's all fancy schmancy maths assignments and pencil-pushing busywork with _your _generation. Back in my days, if you served Lord Hordak, you served on the battlefield, and _you charge up to Bright Moon with a gun and two pieces of bread._"

There was a pause of silence, as Ping put down his maths homework to the side. "Sir…you are aware that I'm the one who processed your application for kidney transplant?"

"Don't call me Sir! I ain't no knight for some _Princess_! If you had known about how they wanted to kill us and eat our bones, you would've worried less about your maths homework and more about _that_!" The faun's eyes bulged out with something bordering on rage as he struggled to lift himself into an upright position. "I've…seen thing. Aquatic things that swim in the water. Big, ocean water. They made wet, slapping sounds when they are on the land and have eyes that don't blink. You ever see that in the Fright Zone, kid?"

"You mean, like a fish?" Ping raised his eyebrows as he wrote in his assessment report, "_Applicant appeared to be emotionally unstable post-op, referral for support group recommended. All relevant documentation archived in the War Office."_

The faun rubbed the itchy line of stitches that ran from one side of his hip to the other, looping halfway around the back as he re-evaluated Ping in surprise…or what Ping thinks was surprise, anyways. The unreadable expression ventured halfway between constipation and trigger-happy belligerence revealed something Ping wasn't quite able to comprehend. He shared nothing in the ways of similar life experience to the man in front of him, and no amount of theoretical knowledge could change that. "I didn't know that someone wee lad like you knew of such deformed monstrosities. The outside world is a…scary place. Oh, when I close my eyes, I can still see those pale scales and hear those slapping noise as it tried desperately to either attack us or find water to breath. Can you imagine that? It lives in the water."

"_Wow. That is _so _underwhelming." _Ping placed his face into his palms. He tried to maintain as much politeness as he could muster, at that point. "Well then, s—ahem, Officer, is there decorated title that you would prefer for me to address you as?"

"Second Engineer Kevan of the 3rd Engineering Regiment." He smiled proudly, the grin stretched almost to the other side of his face as he jabbed a wrinkly thumb at himself, almost ripping off two tubes connected to his hand in the process. "Arrrgh! These stupid tubes, get that stuff off me."

"These tubes keeps you from falling into a sugar-induced coma, S…econd Engineer Kevan." Ping pried the veteran's hands away from the tubes and tried to resume the conversation as a sudden lurch in his thinking drew his attention away from the present moment. "Wait, so you said all that about maths while being an Engineer?"

"Well, I worked more as a sapper than anything else, but yeah. What, you think just because my job requires me to do busywork then I must like it? Get outta here with that nonsense! You Junior Cadets think life's all handed to you on a platter? If it wasn't for my kidney, my leg, and my arms, I'll still rush out there and fight for the Horde any day. They've gone soft, I reckon, giving you all this work to do makes you forget that you're a soldier. You fight for the Horde, not clean the floor at some hospital."

Ping nodded readily as he tried to not offend the man any further without much success. He had probably five minutes before class starts, half his work is unfinished, and Octavia will have his behind if he doesn't give her a satisfying write-up. He twitched, "Look, I apologise for any informality, but I really just got to finish this write-up, can you just answer the questions without talking about all the other stuff? We can talk more at a later date if you want to."

"What do you mean 'talking about all the other stuff'? You think I'm some addle-brained schmuck?" The old man looked aggrieved, angered, even. "I can handle myself just fine, Junior Cadet. Just you watch."

He slowly tried to rotate his body towards the edge of the bed, increment by increment. With the sluggish movement of an ageing body, he pushed himself up to eye level with Ping staring at him.

"I've never been so belittled since the Regiment disbanded. Never, young man."

"Second Engineer, do you feel satisfied with the operation? And do you mind leaving some feedback along with signing this form? Thanks." Ping eyed the clock, and tensed his muscles in preparation to leave the room the moment he got all the documents he needed. "_Two minutes left. If I arrive just one minute late, could I say there was 'unavoidable traffic complications'?"_

"Alright, show me everything." Second Engineer Kevan held out one of his hands impatiently, and received the clipboard with trembling fingers. The barely-audible grumbling were low enough for Ping to be unable to make what he was saying, but quite loud enough for Ping to know that they're not compliments.

"Thank you, Sir. We'll meet again." He bowed, and quickly slammed opened the door to rush down the winding hallways hoping that he would only be late by a minute.

"DID YOU NOT HEAR WHAT I SAID‽" The voice roared behind him, with raspy cough. Ping thundered down the hallway, passing between panels of metal and ducking into between narrow maintenance passageways Kyle told him about to move faster, and one last thought struck him as quite odd.

"_The 3rd Engineering Regiment was disbanded? Then who submitted the documents for the water tank?"_


	14. Chapter 14: Work Is Hard (Ping)

**Author Talk:** Hit a bit of a rough patch. Will be back to uploading new chapters for this fic. Haven't forgotten about it.

**Disclaimer: **The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.

* * *

There are only three things that are important in the Fright Zone: Punctuality, Efficiency, and Obedience. It's a pity that Ping was only able to be two of those three things at once.

As he walked down the winding hallway after class, Kyle approached him, with an expression that curiously bordered on nervousness and trepidation. His eyes were haggard and bleary, his shirt was rumpled and unwashed with a few food stains that have since dried off. His already-wild hair looked, If at all possible, even more untamed. "Uh, Ping, have you been to the meeting yet? I'm sorry if this question was sort of dumb, but I thought that just in case you missed it you should hear it from me first."

"Hm? Oh, you mean the one with the veteran officer? Well, I mean, yeah. Of course I did." Ping waved his hand absent-mindedly, he was thinking about more important things at that moment.

"No, that's not the letting I was talking about. It's the meeting with Force Captain Octavia?" Kyle said, confused. His lower lip trembled for a bit before turning his head to the side.

Ping stopped dead in his tracks and focused his full attention on Kyle. "What meeting?"

"You know, the one where you deliver her a progress update on how's things are going?" Kyle trailed off, an unreadable emotion flittered over his face.

"What?" Ping's face fell, he placed his hands onto Kyle's shoulders, and stared at him with an intense glare, "When's this happening? Maybe I could still make it."

"...it's yesterday."

"Dammit Kyle! It's not even lunch yet and I already have a headache!" Ping rubbed his temples, he wasn't certain why this was happening now, of all times. "Where's my calendar?"

"Oh. It's scrapped. The War Office wanted to synchronise everyone's schedules...for efficiency and so it's all digitised now. But someone accidentally set up the logs wrong and now no one can access it. And, uh, by someone I mean me." Kyle said sheepishly, "Sorry."

"..." Ping sighed, it _is _going to be a long day, isn't it? "So, can you reschedule the meeting?"

"Oh, I already did." There was an expression of pride on Kyle's face that Ping felt was somewhat unearned. "Just in case you didn't go, I scheduled a follow-up meeting for you so that you could, you know...not get rostered onto toilet duty. Forever."

"Thank you. When is the meeting?"

"Oh," Kyle looked taken aback as he turned to rush off towards the nearest monitor. "Hold on I'll check."

"KYLE! You were the one who booked the meeting. And which room is it?" Ping yelled down the hallway, attracting a few strange glances.

"CHECKING!" Kyle yelled back. He typed in what to Ping was a string of incomprehensible gibberish before the monitor spat out a more comprehensible result

Meeting: Junior Cadet Ping (Assigned Duty: Office of Veterans' Benefits and Civil Infrastructure) in R543 at 13:40 w/ Force Captain Octavia

Ping blinked.

"Kyle, is this saying what I think it's saying?" Ping looked pale, almost sickly under the glow of the green light coming from the monitor. "You said this is a simple progress report, right?"

"Oh yeah, is there anything wrong?" Kyle looked confused, as though he couldn't understand what's so wrong about the meeting times."

"It's in two hours." Ping shook his head. "Okay. What does this leave me with for the progress reports? Nothing. I won't have any _time _to write a dang report, Kyle. I'm going to need to skip lunch and hole up in 'the room'."

"...you know what, maybe next time I'll ask you when you want the appointment booked." Kyle looked up, his eyes innocently blank like two discs of light. "Do you want me to circulate your comments to everyone else on the team?"

"Please don't."

"Got it." Kyle nodded, and silently retreated from.

Ping sighed, and changed course towards the office room in preparation for a long day ahead. _"Of all the times for them to upgrade the calendar. It gotta be now? Gee I wonder what's next, a swimming pool? Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea—wait, why am I think about this? Back to the corruption, yes, the corruption."_

There was something off about the 3rd Engineerig Regiment. Though Ping couldn't quite put his finger on what. He knew for a fact that the War Office has been underfunding the Office of Veterans' Benefitd and Civil Infrastructure purportedly due to mismanagement, if previous years' reports have been indicative of anything. Ping suspects there's something deeper going on.

As he opened his office door, he slipped, and the ground rushed up to meet him. Cursing with the rudest words within his vocabulary, he examined the offending object that caused him slip: a pile of paper that slipped off from the desk. More applications. The difference for this batch was the large red letter stuck beneath each brown paper folder reading '**URGENT: PROCESS BEFORE MIDNIGHT**'

Ping groaned. He didn't have the time for this, everyone else is still eating lunch, and he has a progress report to prepare. Before he could procrastinate further, he picked a document at random from the pile.

"._..In compliance with the procedures outlined in Section 3 of the Horde Building Act, the 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for the active protection and maintenance of a new Housing project..."_

Ping furrowed his eyebrows, tossed the document on his desk and started reading the next one.

"._..In compliance with the procedures outlined in Section 5 of the Horde Building Act, the 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for—"_

Ping stopped reading. Onward to the next application form.

_"The 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for—"_

Ping furrowed his brows in annoyance. Just how many of those applications are there? He skimmed the entire stack from top to bottom and groaned. The 3rd Engineering Regiment has submitted _twenty _applications. Ping has no idea whether this was par for course or something abnormal was going on, but there was something disturbing about the fact that, almost form day one, there seems to be issues at hand larger than he could grapple with.

He searched up the database, hoping that there would be some paper trail for their previous projects. There's two roadworks project that they were ostensibly in charge of. Yet whoever was in charge of recording documentations before Force Captain Octavia saddled him with the job had somehow omitted filing any form of paperwork for previous applications. Ping scribbled down the details on a notepad, walked out the door and shouted, "LONNIE!"

"Coming." A voice echoed down from the far end of the hallway. "What is it?"

"Can you grab a helmet and go look up two roadworks projects for me? It's nothing much, but do you mind clearing your schedule after three to go take some photos of the site?" Ping bellowed down, he glared at the person tittering at the corner disapprovingly. "AND THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!"

"Hey mon, keep your voice down, cool? Some of us need to chill after a morning of work." The person looked back, unimpressed. Then he sashayed away as he flicked his dreadlocks at Ping's direction.

"Did you get that, Lonnie?" Ping said, after Lonnie appeared within sight. She looked out of breath and was carting a tray of paperwork, if Ping wasn't already confident that they weren't for him, he probably would've suffered a heart attack right there and then.

"Yeah. Okay. I'll see what I can do. See you in combat sims." Lonnie looked unhappy, but snatched the notepad to examine the details nevertheless. "It's slightly out of the Fright Zone's walls, I'll need a permit, can't get out without some form of permission, remember?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll get it done for you." A trace of impatience crept into Ping's voice. "Alright. Good luck with your duties."

"You too."

Having taken care of that, he went on to crafting a progress report. He slumped down into the bare wooden chair in defeat as he stared blankly at the writing tools in front of him, having not the foggiest as to where to start.

"Oh dear, this is going to be problematic." He murmured to himself.


	15. Chapter 15: Uneasy lies the head (Ping)

**Author Talk: **So belated Happy New Year everyone! Since I had officially turned 18, I thought I might celebrate with another update to the story and see where we go from here. I spent five days writing this chapter, to clarify...I _meant _for this to be release on New Year's Day, but unfortunately, I had to rewrite a few things. Also, I read all of your reviews, so...deep thanks to y'all who bothered to add something special to this story, that really makes my day.

If you like this, creating a link to this on TvTropes' Fanfic recommendations page won't hurt.

**Disclaimer:** The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.

* * *

"...So if you look at the spreadsheet for the last two reporting cycles, the Office of Veterans' Benefits and Civil Infrastructure has seen a 30% increase in efficiency. Bringing us about one standard deviation above the average." Ping paused dramatically, before clicking the slide over to a bar graph with a positively skewed spread over a period of months. "The data here shows the downturn of unprocessed applications since I've been placed in charge of the office. We found that there was an over 35% increase in satisfaction rate compared to the last three, get this, _three_ reporting cycles. We attributed this increasing trend to the fact that claims are now being processed faster and that we are currently on track to process 400 applications a week."

There was something unnerving about addressing a near-empty room that Ping found make him sweat like a waterfall. The Force Captain placed the bowl of nutrient sludge down onto the desk and stared unblinkingly back at him, the shadow of a sneer appeared to hang on one corner of her mouth.

"So tell me, _Junior Cadet. _And what exactly have you accomplished?" She shoved a handful of the semi-viscous goo into her mouth, chewing as she spoke.

"Sorry?" Ping blinked.

"I said, what, exactly have you accomplished? Is this so hard to understand?" This time the sneer solidified on her face, it was an expression of extreme smugness undiluted by any trace of empathy or compassion.

"Well...look, we approved The transplant of a kidney for a patient and, look, didn't we at least manage to frost the glass doors?" Ping gestures helplessly at the double doors behind him.

She smiled toothlessly, "And I take it you did the surgery yourself, did you? Or was it you who frosted the doors? My, my, you certainly are quite the talent."

"Now look here, that is a precipitous argument _at best. _You've given me the right to have some assistance at the office. Don't be surprised if I delegate my assignments." Ping shot back, and regretted it almost as soon as the words left his mouth.

"THIS IS ALL WELL AND GOOD, BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ME?" A voice boomed from the other side of the room, a voice that accompanied with it the sudden but total darkness that encompasses the

_"Why is she in the room? This meeting has nothing to do with her?" _Confusion temporarily jostled aside the abject fear that enveloped him. He saluted nervously, "Uh, I'm currently giving a progress report to my commanding officer. Is something the issue?"

"And on my calendar, it says that I have a physio appointment scheduled at three right here." Her face remained unreadable behind her mask as the lightless tentacles that carried with it a biting cold melted seamlessly into her form.

"Wait a second, I think I know someone who knows what's going on." Ping said, as he slowly edged his way towards the door. As he poked his head out of the door, he gave his best thundering bellow. "**KYLE!**"

"Coming!" A weak voice trailed down from the hallway, leaving Ping feeling somewhat impatient and irritated. Soon, he spied the sweating, red-faced figure run down towards him. Giving a weak salute, Kyle stared at Ping blankly, unsure of what to do next, "Um, so, you sound angry."

"Were you the one who updated Shadow Weaver's calendar?" Ping tried to keep his volume under control, but as he spoke, he couldn't help but feel his voice rise an octave higher. He momentarily wrestled with the urge to shake Kyle by the shoulders. Luckily for Kyle, his better self prevailed.

Kyle's eyes widened, "Oh nooo, i-i-is she...oh—" His voice trailed off as Ping grimly stepped aside to reveal the shadowy figure standing behind him.

Shadow Weaver stepped forward, her hands outstretched as she commanded the shadows to claim Kyle. "NOW, TELL ME WHY I AM HERE. AND WHERE MY PHYSIO APPOINTMENT IS!"

"Gak! The...locations...haven't been...p-p-properly updated! There...must have been a glitch!" Tears streamed down Kyle's eyes as shadows circled around him like hungry sharks around prey.

"WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO BE!"

"Let me get to a...terminal and...check." Kyle choked out, as he wiped the snot and tears off his face. Finally, the shadows dissipated and the room cleared.

"Wait, Kyle, before you go...I can't get the calendar to display on my monitor! Which button do I click?" Force Captain Octavia shouted at Kyle, as she tried to check her calendar. "Nothing seems to be working!"

"Hm? Oh, do you mind if I take a look?" Kyle stopped trembling as his more helpful nature took over, he stepped over and examined the screen with a rapt focus. "Oh, it doesn't seem like you've verified your credentials yet. I think it's to prevent identity theft or some-such, but it's not implemented well. Anyways, it'll ask for a security question once you click next. So, uh, click next."

"The blue button?" She grumbled in confusion, slapping her face with a tentacle.

"Oh yes, click that. Now...uh, I think this is the landing page for someone else. Hold on, I'll video call someone." Kyle said, rapidly typing in a long sequence of numbers as he tried to help the confused Force Captain. "Hey Donny!"

"Yeah?" A bleary lizard-man popped up on the screen. Seeing the face of Force Captain Octavia, he immediately jumped to give a salute and bumped his head on the ceiling. "Ow!"

"We got another glitch here. Force Captain Octavia's login credentials are confused with someone else's. The events aren't hers...So do you mind checking the database? I think Shadow Weaver's abouttozapmewithboltsofpuredarkness—OW!"

"FIND ME MY PHYSIO APPOINTMENT!" The thunder of her voice echoed through while Kyle jumped out of the room with his face as white as a ghost's, he rushed down the hallway to . Ping grimaced, as he mentally composed a list of items he had yet to cover in his progress report. Unfortunately, it was at that moment Shadow Weaver turned her attention to him. "AND YOU, _PING,_ IS IT? DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE DONE WELL IN YOUR ROLE?"

Ping knew that tone of voice. He heard it once when he was conned into accepting this blasted job by Octavia, that lousy octopus-person "N-no, Commander, I'm just a lowly office worker, I do what I can to reduce the preexisting backlog, but I would hardly consider myself to be—"

"AND YOU WOULD SAY THAT YOU'RE INCOMPETENT?" Ping couldn't see beneath the cold mask beneath her face, and yet he somehow had the gut feeling that an evil smile was culminating beneath it. "VERY WELL, THEN IT IS DONE!"

"Sorry, what? Commander, w-wait!" Ping yelped, but it was almost too late, smoke gathered around her and her form shimmered out of focus. Desperate, he yelled the first thing that came into his head, "I know of a spy in the Horde!"

That did the trick.

The room fell silent, Shadow Weaver shimmered back into focus as an icy gaze peered into him. There was only an awkward as Ping's protracted nervous breakdown worsened with each passing moment, making his tongue heavy and mute, "Well, I—"

"Commander Shadow Weaver, I finally found your booking details! It's in the room next door and, uh, it's now. The checkup starts now, sorry." Kyle rushed in, with a triumphant smile that disappeared as he made his way behind Ping, as though he could be shielded from Shadow Weaver's icy gaze. "Oh dear."

"Junior Cadet," Shadow Weaver said, her voice quiet and pronounced. Her voice now barely above a whisper as she walked into the shadows, "We will meet again, and I expect a full report on this matter the next time we meet. I expect that you will rise to meet the responsibility of your Role. Or die trying. Is this understood?"

"Y-y-y-yes!" Ping stood straighter, and tried to mask the raw panic that he felt as he clenched his fists behind his back.

"Then I will see to it that you're conferred the full weight of your responsibilities. Octavia, I fear that you're hand-holding him too much. If you see that he has potential, then there's no need for such inanities."

The Force Captain's face paled as she was addressed directly, her head bobbed up and down with a meekness and subservience that Ping had never seen before. Once more, Shadow Weaver faded into the darkened corners of the room. She trembled, "This concludes our meeting today. You are dismissed."

"But I still haven't finished—" Ping protested, flipping through a dozen or so slides to demonstrate his point before interrupted by a heavy tentacle slamming down onto the desk in front of him, cleaving it in half.

"I. SAID. YOU. ARE. DISMISSED." Force Captain Octavia said through gritted teeth glaring at him directly with reddened eyes, seemingly on the verge of apoplectic rage. "Is that understood? You are _nothing_. Nothing. Now go."

"Yes, ma'am." Ping said, made a salute, and dragged Kyle and his presentation with him out of the room as politely as possible. His jaw clenched as he eyed the two rooms behind.

"_So, this is real power." _He thought, thinking back on the shadows that Shadow Weaver commanded as though they were but natural extensions of her own body. Then he thought of how small Octavia looked as she obeyed Shadow Weaver's every command. And how small _he _was. He stayed silent for a moment, and walked down the hallway.


End file.
